


Les Amis de la Resistance

by storytellerluna



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Gen, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-02-04 22:15:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 26
Words: 75,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12780693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellerluna/pseuds/storytellerluna
Summary: The French Resistance AU that nobody asked me for.  As World War II rages through Europe, Les Amis de l'ABC fight against the Nazi occupation of Paris.  It's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or death.  How many of them (and which ones) will die in the fight for freedom?  You'll have to read it to find out.  (I promise some of them live.)FYI: A lot of Nazis will get themselves punched and/or killed in this.  I'm not sorry.





	1. It Begins

April 15th, 1939 was a seemingly good day for Paris.  The winter had finally gone, the world was thawing, and as the temperatures rose, so did the people’s spirits.  The public parks and streets of Paris saw a lot of traffic that day, and the shop owners saw more business than they had in a long while.  By midday, the Place Saint Michel was packed with Parisians and foreigners alike, all wanting to enjoy the sun.

A little boy of about twelve ran in and out among the legs of the travelers, in between the cars, darting here and there with the agility and grace of a little sparrow dodging the cat’s claws.  He chuckled and sang a little as he ran, and anyone who saw him would have said he was the most cheerful little sprite in all of Paris.

Most of the cafés and bistros near Saint Michel were packed with lunchtime patrons, but when this child entered the Café Musain, he was not looking for lunch.  Instead, he looked around until he caught the eye of the café owner, Madame Hucheloup, who nodded at him and said “your friends are already in the back,” before going back to serving her other customers.

The back room of the Café Musain was not nearly as crowded as the front.  The young sparrow saw only a handful of people gathered there, doing an assortment of things: some of them played chess, and some cards.  Some chatted animatedly, and a few of them gathered around a small radio, listening and looking concerned.  One was off in a corner drinking by himself.

“Hey everybody!” Gavroche called out, drawing attention, “Guess who’s back in town?”

At that moment, a tall, burly student appeared behind the tiny sprite in the doorway.  He wore a scarlet waistcoat and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.  He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned against the door frame, a proud smirk on his face.

“Yeah, that’s right, Bahorel is back in Paris,” he announced.  “I missed you punks.”

All at once, everyone in the room started cheering and clapping.  Joly and Bossuet rushed over, apparently trying to be the first to hug him, and Bahorel enveloped them both in what can only be described as the warmest and friendliest of bear hugs ever given.  Other Amis joined in on this, and suddenly there was a throng of people in the middle of the doorway all trying to hug the same person.

“Hey Gavroche!” Bahorel cried from the middle of the group.  “Get over here and let me hug you too!”

The boy grinned, a trickster’s glint in his eye, and then darted across the room with a sudden burst of speed, barreling into the mass of people with surprising force, knocking several of them off balance.  Bahorel caught him and fell purposefully onto his back on the floor, Gavroche sitting on his chest.  They lay there in a fit of laughter for a while before finally composing themselves and sitting back up. 

“Man, I probably missed you the most, little guy.”

“Are you okay?” Jehan asked.

Bahorel laughed again.  “I’ve taken a lot worse than being tackled by a twelve-year-old,” he said.  “I think I can manage it.”

Feuilly watched the group from a nearby table, but he hadn’t joined in the hug.  His eyes looked happy to see his friend return to Paris safely, but his smile was a sad one.  He smoothed the fan-folds out of a newspaper he’d been trying to read, and set it down on the table before standing up and walking calmly over to the pile of friends in the doorway.

“Welcome back, _mon ami,”_ he greeted his old friend.  “How was Spain?”

Bahorel put Gavroche down and sighed as he looked Feuilly in the eyes.  “Unfortunately, it’s still full of fascists,” he answered truthfully.

Feuilly looked down at the floor.  He had known that already, the paper said so, but somehow hearing confirmation from someone who had been there made it seem more real, and more terrifying.

Bahorel put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, but didn’t really know what to say.

“Welcome back, Bahorel,” Enjolras said, crossing the room to stand next to his friend.  He had been sitting by the radio, and by the look on his face, it was not good news.  “We’re pleased to see you made it home from Spain safely.  I take it this means the civil war is over?”

Bahorel nodded once.  “Franco’s still in charge,” he admitted grudgingly.  “We put up one hell of a fight, though.”

Enjolras looked grim.  He’d been afraid this would happen, but he had really hoped it wouldn’t.

“My friends, I know this is going to be hard to hear, but bear with me,” he said to the room.  “There is now a fascist state on our Southern border which we need to pay attention to, but that’s not all.  Feuilly has been paying attention to the global news, as have I, and it is absolutely crucial that we should not remain silent on this.  We need to talk about Germany and Italy.”  He crossed the room to a map of Europe that hung on the wall, and pointed to Germany like a schoolteacher giving a geography lesson.

“Germany already controls Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia.”  With each new place he mentioned, he placed a marker on the map.  “And Italy just invaded Albania.  We know that Hitler and Mussolini are working together, too.”

“Yeah, and both of them also just helped Franco take over too,” Bahorel commented.

“Wait, so… what do you think is going to happen?” Marius asked, concern evident in his voice.

“There’s gonna be another war,” Bahorel informed him matter-of-factly.  Marius looked alarmed, and glanced at Enjolras for clarification.  His facial expression unfortunately confirmed Bahorel’s remark.

“We know Hitler is greedy, and very imperialist,” Combeferre explained solemnly.  “He’s on a conquest of Europe, he won’t stop where he is.  He didn’t just stop at Austria.  He wants more power.”

“He’s an emperor,” Enjolras stated.  “He wants an empire.”

After an awkward silence, Jehan spoke up.  “It looks like he’s moving East right now.  Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia… next would be…”

“Poland,” Feuilly answered.  His voice betrayed the anxiety he felt for the people of that country and the fate that might befall them if Germany invaded.

Enjolras nodded his agreement.  “France and Great Britain both promised to protect Poland’s borders against any German invasion.  But we know Germany is willing to violate international agreements for the sake of Hitler’s imperial conquest.  My friends, I hate to say it, but it looks like we are indeed on the brink of war.”

All of Les Amis looked worried, but none quite as worried as Feuilly.  He fiddled with a piece of paper in his hands, folding it into a fan shape, unfolding it, and then folding it again.  Working with his hands always helped take his mind off troubling things, but this time, it didn’t seem to be working.  Things had already gotten bad, especially for the Jewish people, and he knew a war would only make it worse.  Combeferre put a hand on Feuilly’s shoulder to reassure him that he had friends he could trust.

Just then, Les Amis heard the sounds of a group of people shouting outside.  They sounded truly angry.  Bossuet went outside to see what was going on, and returned a few moments later, out of breath and looking scared.

“It’s not good,” he reported, still catching his breath.  “They’re shouting hate speech.  I think… I think they want us to ally with Germany.”

“Where are they going?” Feuilly demanded, suddenly alert.

“North, across the river,” Bossuet said.

“There’s a temple that way!”  Feuilly jumped up and bounded out the door, followed quickly by Jehan and Bahorel.  The others chased after them as well.  Feuilly and Jehan knew the way to that particular synagogue, since they attended services there on most Saturdays.  Together with their friends, they raced along the street, caught up to the racist parade, and then passed them.  Led by Feuilly, Les Amis took a shortcut and managed to make it to the temple first.

When they got there, Feuilly and Jehan rushed inside to find the rabbi, while the rest of Les Amis linked arms and stood in front of the synagogue’s steps, on the sidewalk, facing the anti-Semitic horde.  In a short while, the rabbi came out and stood with them as well.

“This place is protected!” the rabbi called.  “Your hatred is not allowed here.”

Unfortunately, the fascists did not listen to this, and they kept pressing in closer to the synagogue, shouting their Nazi slogans and corralling Les Amis and the rabbi on the sidewalk.  Les Amis stood firm, ready to fight them off with force if need be.  But just then, a bottle with a burning rag came flying over their heads, thrown by someone in the approaching horde.  Time seemed to slow down as Les Amis watched it fly, some of their expressions changing from anger to horror.  Bahorel even reached up and tried to grab the Molotov out of the air, but he missed catching it by barely an inch, and it hit the wall behind him.

The bottle smashed against the wall, and the liquid inside it ran down the stone like water over steps.  The burning rag fell to the ground, and its flame sputtered out when it found nothing to ignite on the sidewalk.  No damage done.

“Hey, what the Hell?” shouted one of the Nazi sympathizers when he saw that the synagogue had not gone up in flames.

“They work better when there’s more than just water in your cocktails,” a childlike voice cried from behind the crowd.  They turned around, and saw Gavroche sitting perched on top of a bench, looking for all the world like some strange underfed sparrow.  He grinned mischievously at the racist horde, holding up a gas can which the lead fascist organizer instantly recognized as his.  This man lunged at Gavroche angrily, but the child was quicker: he leapt off the bench and landed on the sidewalk behind it, still holding the gas can.  Then he scrambled up a nearby wall using the vines that were growing on the building, and danced off across the rooftops, singing and laughing all the way.

Some of the fascists tried to chase him, but most did not bother.  He was too quick, and they didn’t know how to climb to the rooftops anyway.  Still, without the ability to make Molotov cocktails, they had lost their main advantage.  There were actually more of Les Amis than there were of them.

“Get out of here!” Courfeyrac shouted, noticing the fascists’ alarm.  The rest of Les Amis took up the chant as well.  Then, at Feuilly’s suggestion, they all began marching slowly forward, pressing the horde back off the sidewalk and away from the temple.

That spelled the end of the assault on the synagogue that day.  The fascists scattered, and Les Amis began to cheer.

“They will come back,” the rabbi said as he watched them leave.  Then, turning back to Les Amis, he added, “thank you for what you have done today.”

“It was no problem, and we will do this as often as we need to,” Feuilly promised.  After he said it, he glanced at his friends, hoping they would agree.  They all nodded.

“You should all learn how to protect yourselves,” the rabbi warned them.  “There are dangerous times ahead, I fear.”

The group began walking back to their meeting place in the Café Musain together, watching out for remnants of the fascist horde as they went.  They knew the rabbi was right, of course: Enjolras had also been saying the same thing, after all.  But after the face-off outside the temple, they couldn’t bring themselves to think too much about what was to come.  The running, and the stress of the showdown, had exhausted them.

“We’ll have plenty of time to prepare later,” Bossuet said.  “Right now, I think we need something that can take our mind off of things for a little while.”  He didn’t want to say “the stress of war.”  After all, there wasn’t a war yet, and he didn’t want to jinx it.

“Did my eyes deceive me, or did a new cinema pop up in our neighborhood while I was in Spain?” Bahorel asked.

“It’s real!” Joly exclaimed.  “And actually, I’ve been so busy with medical school lately that I haven’t had the chance to go see anything there yet.”

And so, it was decided.  Together as a group at last, Les Amis de l’ABC took a well-deserved movie break.  At least for now, the war could wait until another day.


	2. Paris in the Spring

Marius Pontmercy left his grandfather’s house in an angry huff.  They had gotten into an argument about the German advances in Europe, and as soon as the old man had discovered that some of Marius’ closest friends were Jewish, he had gone on a tirade against Feuilly, Jehan, their families, their friends, and their people.  Marius knew his grandfather held some conservative views, but this took him completely by surprise, and, furious, he stormed out.  Now, he blustered through the streets of Paris with no real direction to his stride.  He didn’t know where he was going, or when he would return, or what he would say to his grandfather when he did.  The only thing he felt certain of was his uncertainty.

Over time, his pace slowed, and he began to look around him and admire the scenery as he walked.  Finding himself near Tuileries, he decided perhaps a walk through the garden would help lift his spirits.  After all, it was a beautiful day in early April, and all of the Tuileries flowers were in full bloom.

He strolled down the garden paths, breathing in the fragrance and feeling the warmth of the sun on his face.  People smiled at him as he passed, and he found himself smiling back.  Occasionally, he stopped to smell the flowers and watch daily life unfold around him.  To his surprise, he found he quite enjoyed it.

Smiling brightly now, he took off his jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and casually began to stroll through the middle of the park.  Several little children in dirty, ragged clothing ran about underfoot, giggling and calling out to each other playfully.  Then he noticed a young woman in a light blue summer dress with a beautiful, kindly smile and light brown curls that bounced about her shoulders when she moved.  The sunlight shining on her hair made it look like she had a crown, or perhaps a halo, and the pastel color of her dress blended wonderfully with the flowers.  She looked so beautiful, and so at home among the Tuileries roses, and he couldn’t help but stare at her.  She also carried half a dozen baguettes in her arms, which struck him as strange, since she seemed to be on her own.  He stopped walking and casually leaned up against one of the garden’s statues to watch her.

The young woman called out to the children, then knelt in the grass so she could interact with them on their own level.  As they flocked around her, she began breaking the baguettes into equal pieces and handing them to the little ones, smiling all the while.  She continued doing this until all of her baguettes were gone, and she laughed and chatted with them as they ate.  When they had finished all the bread, they scattered, running about the garden as they had been before, but with slightly fuller stomachs.

She watched them go, and then looked up and saw him standing there.  She smiled sweetly at him, then stood up, brushed her skirt off, and continued walking down the path.  As she passed near his statue, he left its shelter and fell into stride beside her.

“Good morning, mademoiselle,” he greeted her, trying hard to look suave.  From the look on her face, it wasn’t working.

“Good morning, monsieur,” she replied politely.  “Um… you’ll have to forgive me, but I don’t believe I know you…”

“Oh!  Um, no, you don’t… I mean, we haven’t had the pleasure… my name is Marius.  Pontmercy,” he added quickly.

“Cosette Fauchelevent,” she replied.

“Cosette!” he cried.  “What a beautiful name.”

She muttered her thanks and glanced at him curiously as they walked.

Marius ran his hand through his hair, hoping it didn’t look too unkempt.  He thought of Courfeyrac, who always managed to keep his hair perfectly under control, and who also seemed to be able to charm anyone, regardless of gender.  He wished he had even an ounce of Courfeyrac’s skill and charm.

“I, uh, saw you giving bread to those poor children.  That was very nice of you.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed.  “Well, it was the least I could do.  They don’t have a home, or any money to buy food…”

“Are you always this kind to people?” he asked, rather awkwardly.

“I can’t think of any other way to be,” she replied, perplexed by his question.

They walked in silence for a while, Marius fidgeting with various parts of his clothing as they went along, and Cosette quietly observing him.  It seemed to her that this Marius Pontmercy was a very strange boy, but she was intrigued by him.  At one point, he tried to say something, but got tongue tied and shyly looked away.

“Monsieur, I wonder… do you like art?” Cosette asked, “and if so, would you like to accompany me to the Jeu de Paume?”  The art museum was not very far at all from where they now walked.

“What?  Oh!  Yes!  Yes, I would love to,” he cried, his whole face bright.  She smiled at this: she found his enthusiasm endearing.  Together, they strolled down the central path, past statues and fountains and toward one of Paris’ most famous art museums.  Several young couples lounging near the largest fountain in the park glanced at them as they walked past and did not think anything of it.  They looked right at home.

Marius smiled at the columns of the Jeu de Paume as they approached it, and could not stop himself from explaining to Cosette how the building had been commissioned by Napoleon III during his reign as the Emperor of France.  Cosette seemed fascinated by this, and listened intently as Marius began to tell her all about the Bonaparte family.

“But then at Waterloo, he – oh, no.  I’m boring you, aren’t I?”

Cosette laughed, and Marius thought it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.  “No, it’s not boring,” she reassured him.  “Actually, I think it’s rather sweet, how much you care.”

“Really?” Marius asked, surprised.

“Really, it is!” she insisted.  “I think that all people should have something in this world that they care a lot about.  If they did, perhaps the world would be a happier place.”

Marius stared at her in awe.  He’d thought she was pretty to begin with, but now he thought she was absolutely beautiful.  The way she smiled made the whole world feel a little warmer, and her laugh sounded like music.  Above all, she seemed to see good in everything, and she walked through life as though everything were bright and sunny, determined to do something good for at least one person in the world.  And she didn’t seem to mind his awkward floundering or his obsession with the dead Emperor!  His friends had never quite understood that.  Courfeyrac had even advised him not to talk about Napoleon anymore in front of Enjolras if he knew what was best for him.

Cosette observed Marius thoughtfully.  Since moving to Paris, she had met a lot of men who tried to talk themselves up, boasting of their achievements, and most of the time exaggerating what those achievements were.  This man, however, did not seem to want to do that.  He didn’t talk endlessly about himself.  In fact, he didn’t talk about himself at all, preferring instead to talk about history, art, and beauty.  He didn’t try to put on a show; instead, he showed her who he was.  He stammered, laughed awkwardly, made mistakes, and his imperfections made him beautiful.  To her surprise, Cosette found herself smiling more and more often when he spoke.

Together, they wandered through the museum and the public square, laughing and chatting about a multitude of topics.  Cosette admired the Impressionist paintings quite a bit, and Marius admired what Cosette admired.  They lingered until most of the patrons had gone home and the sun dipped close to the horizon.

“I should probably be getting home,” Cosette said.  “My papa will be worried.”

Marius glanced at the sun’s position and sadly had to agree.  It would be getting dark soon, and if she had a father who cared about her, she should return to him.

“Can I see you again?” he suddenly blurted, surprised at his own bravery.

Cosette thought about it for a moment, then produced a slip of paper and a pen, using the side of the fountain as a table as she wrote something down.  Then, with a smile, she handed him the paper and walked away.

Marius watched her go, then glanced down at the paper in his hand.  On it, written in very neat handwriting, he saw these words: “Cosette Fauchelevent, No. 55 Rue Plumet.”  Smiling bright enough to light up the entire garden, he hugged the address to him and kissed it.  Then, excitedly, he left Tuileries and skipped down the streets of Paris with a spring in his step, heading for the Latin Quarter, where he knew he could find Courfeyrac.


	3. Not All Quiet on the Eastern Front

That summer slid by without much action.  Most of the news Les Amis heard was about Marius’ developing relationship with Cosette Fauchelevent, and not about Europe’s growing problems.  However, summer is destined to end eventually, and as the cold increased, so did the political tension.

“I don’t trust Stalin,” Enjolras was saying to Combeferre in the café one day in early September.  “Not one bit.”

“Me neither,” Combeferre agreed.  “We don’t get nearly enough news out of the Soviet Union.  If you ask me, they are up to something.”

Enjolras nodded.  “And what news we do have is not promising.  They had so much potential!  A people’s party, an empire toppled, a revolutionary government… but now look at them.  Stalin is a dictator, plain and simple.  They need another revolution; he betrayed the last one.”

Combeferre began to reply, but at that moment, Courfeyrac ran up to their table and slammed a newspaper down on it with a loud bang that made the whole café jump.

“Courfeyrac, what the Hell…?” Combeferre stammered.

“Better rally the troops, _mon capitaine,_ for we are at war,” Courfeyrac declared, looking at Enjolras with a grave expression.  “I’m going to find Feuilly.”  And with that, he ran off.

Enjolras glanced at the headline on the first page and threw the paper to Combeferre, who read it, then stood up and addressed the café.

“Germany just invaded Poland.”

The café exploded with commotion.  Someone cried out from a seat near the front, several people shouted curses at Hitler and slurs about the Germans, some were confused, and some were furious.  A bottle hit the ground, and at a table in the back, Joly scrambled for a napkin while Bossuet and Bahorel tried to clean up the spilled wine.  Bossuet apologized profusely to Bahorel for having gotten some of the wine on his waistcoat on accident.  Joly and Bossuet’s girlfriend, Musichetta, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away some of the wine which had splashed on Bossuet’s face.  More people began shouting.  Over the ruckus, Madame Hucheloup called for everyone to remain calm, but not very many of them listened to her.

“Combeferre, go find the others,” Enjolras commanded, then turned and announced to the café, “Any man here who calls himself a Friend of the ABC, stand with me!”  Then, he marched through the chaos, seizing Grantaire by the arm as he passed the bar and pulling the drunkard to his feet.  Joly, Bossuet, Musichetta, and Bahorel also followed him, disposing of the broken wine bottle on the way.  Several other people followed as well.

He marched to the table in the corner which Bossuet, Joly, Musichetta, and Bahorel had been sitting at.  Then, he promptly climbed up on top of the table and stood there, using it as his podium to speak to the crowd in the café, Amis and other patrons alike.

“Citizens, listen to me: the time to fight is now!  We need to organize and tell the Germans they can _not just walk all over Europe—”_

“What the Hell do the Germans think they’re doing?” one of the patrons demanded, still shocked by the news.  “How can they get away with this?”  Other patrons added their concerns as well, eager to express their outrage at Hitler’s newest conquest.

“They think they are trying to start a war,” Enjolras declared.  “And they’ll get one.”  He looked up as Courfeyrac and Feuilly entered the room.  Looking Feuilly in the eye, he continued, “France and Great Britain promised to protect Poland, and they’ll keep that oath.  We are going to war with Germany.”

“How do you know they’ll keep their oath?” Feuilly asked, his voice a mix of rage and despair.  “You can’t be sure of that.  You’re not the one who declares the wars.  And Germany’s already invaded, how are we going to protect the people if Hitler’s already there?  Poland cries…”

“Oh, there’ll be a war, alright,” Bahorel reassured the room.  “Governments love declaring wars on each other, and the atmosphere is definitely right for one.”

“Germany is powerful,” Feuilly lamented.

“So is France,” Enjolras insisted.

“Don’t worry,” Combeferre announced as he entered the room with Jehan.  “We’re here to help.”

“How on Earth are we going to help?” Grantaire mumbled, extremely skeptical.

Enjolras cast his gaze around the room, looking at each of his friends in turn, and each of the other patrons as well.  He saw a group of people who were willing and capable of changing the world.  They may not all agree on every issue, but they could work together nonetheless.  They had camaraderie.  They had philosophy and politics, they had jovial laughter and deep, heavy depression, and they got through it all.  They had _Fraternité._

“We need to band together,” he announced.  “We need to put aside our differences and stand with those who are fighting.  France is fighting the Germans as we speak, and she needs all of her citizens to join in the battle.  Well then, I say let us stand with our country!  Let us fight.”

“You mean enlist?” Courfeyrac asked.  “I suppose we could.  And when we get to Germany, we could see how nice Hitler’s ugly banners look when they burn.”  As he spoke, he folded the newspaper article announcing the declaration of war into a paper airplane, threw it into the fireplace, and watched as it went up in flames.

“You know I’m a pacifist,” Combeferre reminded Enjolras, “But I will follow you anywhere.”

“We’re fighting Nazis?  That sounds great!” Bahorel cried heartily.  “I’d love to get back into it.  Give ‘em a taste of their own medicine…”  He made a few practice punches in the air.

“Are you going to enlist?” Feuilly asked him.

“Are you kidding?  The army’s too rigid for me, too authoritative.  There are too many rules and not enough anarchy.”

“You fought in Spain.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t join the ARMY.  International Brigades are completely diff—”

The sound of shattering glass made everyone turn.  Grantaire was on his feet, looking straight at Enjolras.  His wine bottle lay broken at his feet, the red wine spilling out across the floor like blood.

“You cannot seriously be thinking this right now.”

Enjolras sighed.  “Grantaire, I—”

“No!” the cynic yelled, interrupting.  “I know you’re used to ignoring me, you do it all the time, but hear me out on this one, okay, Apollo?  You can’t join the army because it’s blood and death and fire and gas and tears.  It’s despair and suffering and spilled wine and wooden caskets.  Hitler is a murderer, and Stalin is a murderer, Hell, even Charles de Gaulle is a murderer, and there are millions more murderers fighting for them.”  He snorted cynically.  “Isn’t modern society great?  Gotta admire how we’ve perfected the art of slaughter.  Truly amazing.  Oh, and the best part is that it does nothing, it is pointless, because after the war there is still murder and everything goes on like it was, except the world is darker and something is missing from it, so you really didn’t change anything at all.  Except yourself of course.”

“Grantaire…”

“I mean it,” he continued.  “I may be a worthless drunk libertine, but I know this much.  People who go to war either don’t come back, or worse, they come back broken.  Go ahead and enlist if you want to, but leave me out of it.  I won’t watch that happen to someone again.”  With that, he turned and left the room.

For what felt like ages, no one spoke a word.  The silence felt heavy, like a tomb.  No one knew quite what to say.

“Well… some of us probably aren’t eligible to enlist anyway,” Joly pointed out quietly, breaking the silence.  “I have asthma, for one, and a lame leg, and chronic colds.”  He coughed.  “I don’t think they let you join the army if you have chronic colds.  And Jehan’s anemic.  And Feuilly’s parents died of TB, so they probably wouldn’t let him enlist either for fear of another outbreak – which is a really solid tactic actually, because TB is serious business – and… I think Bahorel might be flat-footed…”

“Hey, how dare you?” Bahorel asked, half jesting.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s flat-footed or not,” Combeferre pointed out.  “And it doesn’t matter that he’s got experience in a war.  He’s an anarchist.  The military doesn’t like radicals.  Enj, you’re probably ineligible too then.”

“Maybe we all are,” Courfeyrac pondered.

“Yeah, all our names are probably on public record now,” Combeferre said.

“And I can’t enlist because I’m too young!” Gavroche complained loudly.

Enjolras frowned.  “Well then… we’ll have to help the war effort in every way possible from home.  There are ways that a people can fight.  We shall—”

“Enjolras,” Jehan whispered.  “Sorry to cut you off, but… Feuilly’s gone.”

“He went home,” Courfeyrac explained solemnly.  “I can’t imagine how hard this must be for him.”

“Hold on a minute,” Combeferre said, thinking aloud, his brow furrowed in concentration.  “You said ‘there are ways that a people can fight.’  If there was ever a man of the people, it’s Feuilly.”

“What’s your point?” Enjolras asked.

“Everyone just hear me out, okay?  I have an idea.”

~

Combeferre knocked lightly on Feuilly’s door and waited.  A minute passed, then two, and still no answer from within.  He knocked again, getting worried.  Still nothing.

“Feuilly?” he called, and listened hard at the door.  He thought he could hear muffled sobbing from inside the apartment.  “Feuilly, it’s Combeferre, can I come in?”

“Please go away,” Feuilly mumbled, barely audible.  “I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”

“That’s alright,” Combeferre said, keeping his voice calm and steady.  “You don’t have to talk to me.  That’s okay.  Just… maybe you should look out your window.”

After a while, Feuilly stood up and walked slowly to his window, unsure of what he would find.  In the street below, he saw Les Amis and dozens of other Parisians standing solemnly as if they were holding a vigil.  Most of them held lit candles, their flames flickering gently in the soft breeze, giving off a serene light.  Enjolras and Jehan, at the head of the group, held a banner between the two of them which read “Solidarity with Poland!” and which was decorated around the edges with red and white flowers that Feuilly suspected had been Jehan’s idea.  Gavroche, sitting on Bahorel’s shoulders, smiled at Feuilly as he waved a small Polish flag.  Feuilly thought he might cry.

Combeferre was still standing outside when he finally opened the door.

“I love you all,” Feuilly whispered as he blinked back tears.  “You have no idea what this means to me.  Please come inside.  There’s not much room, and I don’t have much to offer, but… just please come in.”

Somehow, all of Les Amis managed to fit inside Feuilly’s tiny apartment.  It was cold, but they warmed the place up with the candles from their vigil, and soon, someone had some cocoa ready.  Bahorel’s booming voice rang out above everyone else’s as he started singing, and a few of the others joined in.

A knock on the door interrupted their party, and Feuilly jumped at the sound.  Worried, he glanced over to where the trio stood.  At a nod from Enjolras, Courfeyrac decided to investigate.

Marius Pontmercy and his girlfriend Cosette stood there, looking for all the world like a picturesque couple, their bourgeois clothing starkly out of place in Feuilly’s working class neighborhood.  Cosette held a covered tray in her hands and smiled politely at Courfeyrac.  Marius stood with his arm rather awkwardly around his girlfriend.

“Oh!  Um, hey, Courfeyrac!  Um, you haven’t met…”

“Pontmercy, now is really not the best time to introduce your girlfriend.”

Before they could continue, the girl took a small step forward, balancing the tray on one palm so she could appropriately shake Courfeyrac’s hand with the other.  _“Bonjour,”_ she greeted, smiling sweetly the whole time, “my name is Cosette Fauchelevent.  I understand a Monsieur Feuilly lives here?  We’ve brought him some cupcakes.  We thought they might help.  May we come in?”

Courfeyrac nodded and stepped aside to let them pass.  Cosette glided into the room, graceful as ever, introduced herself to Feuilly, and showed him the cupcakes she and Marius had made.  She had decorated half of them with red and white icing in horizontal stripes, the design of the Polish flag.  The other half were blue and white, with stars of David in the center.  He teared up again when he saw them.

“ _Vive Poland,_ monsieur,” she whispered to him.  “Marius told me how worried you were about everything.”

“Pontmercy,” Enjolras declared, looking at Marius with pride, “you’ve done something right for once.  I approve.”

Marius felt the blush spread all the way across his face.  He must have been redder than Bahorel’s waistcoat.  But it felt good.  As he listened to the music play, and mingled there in Feuilly’s small apartment, and watched how well Cosette seemed to be getting along with everyone, he smiled to himself.  He felt truly at home.  And as Feuilly passed the evening there among his friends, his adopted family, he felt truly at home too.  He knew he wouldn’t leave this group for the world.


	4. Under Fire

Bossuet hadn’t even opened his eyes yet, but he could feel someone slide into bed behind him.  Sleepily, he muttered, “Joly?”

“Wrong,” a woman’s voice murmured.  She wrapped her arms around him from behind and kissed him on his bald head before whispering in his ear, “guess again.”

Bossuet smiled.  “Musichetta,” he said, eyes still closed.

“Now you’ve got it right.”  She smiled as she embraced him.

He lay there for a minute, gradually edging out of sleep and enjoying the warmth of her body in the bed next to his.  Opening his eyes at long last, he took her hands in his and admired the soft brown of her skin against the darker brown of his own.  He kissed her hands.  Then he turned around to look her in the eyes.

“Good morning, Evil Genius,” she greeted him playfully.

“That’s my line,” he chuckled, “and I say it to life.  Life is an evil genius.”

Musichetta hugged him tighter, and they stayed like that for a while, pressed up against each other.

“I wish we could stay like this forever,” he whispered, “but I’m sure there’s some pressing matter that demands I get out of this bed, isn’t there?”

Musichetta nodded.  “Apparently there’s something going on downtown.  Your friends are there.  Joly needed to leave earlier this morning for the medical school, but he wants to meet us in the Place de la Bastille later.  He left you some breakfast in the kitchen.”

“What’s happening?” Bossuet asked as he rolled out of bed and began pulling on clothing.

“I’m not really sure,” she said, frowning slightly.  “But Joly said Enjolras is going to give another speech.”

Bossuet frowned too.  Les Amis had been protesting against the rise of fascism for several months now, and in that time, Germany had conquered Poland and turned its attention to France.  Enjolras had given many public speeches in these past months, all of them emphasizing the importance of anti-fascist action, and he needed Les Amis’ support.  His speeches were fiery and passionate, and they always filled Bossuet with a sense of purpose.  He probably would have listened to them even if he hadn’t been Enjolras’ friend.  Still, with each passing week, the Nazis drew closer to his home, and he had to admit that prospect terrified him.

He ate his breakfast quickly, then pulled on a jacket and shoes.  “Let’s go meet Joly,” he said, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves.

Musichetta smiled and took his hand.  “Let’s,” she agreed.  Seeing the worry on his face, she added “it’ll be fine!  We’re just two young people in Paris, going to meet our boyfriend in the city.  The three of us are going to go on a date, listen to a fantastic public speaker, and have a great time.  The Evil Genius can’t catch up with us today.”

Bossuet smiled and squeezed her hand.  “See, this is why I love you, ‘Chetta,” he exclaimed, and kissed her.  Then, hand in hand, the two of them headed off toward the Place de la Bastille.

~

“Citizens!” cried Enjolras passionately, “The time is now!  Our nation is at war, do not sit idly by while the Germans kill our brothers on the front!  Do not allow fascism to invade France as it has invaded Germany, Italy, and Spain!  Let us stand with the people of the world and fight back against this threat!  We have to act fast: Paris is an open city, most of our army is scattered, but the enemy is at our gates!  It’s up to us to defend our city: it’s up to us to take up arms and fight back!  _Vive la France!_ ”  He thrust his fist in the air, but only a few people followed.  Next to him, Combeferre surveyed the crowd.  Not only was it the smallest one they’d had yet, but it was also the least enthusiastic.

“Workers of Paris!” Feuilly entreated, running up and down the street pleading with the people, “Listen to me!  If you stood with us for Poland, then stand with us now.  Help us defend our home!”

As Feuilly pleaded with the workers, Jehan and Bahorel ran around the perimeter of the Place de la Bastille, pleading with passersby, café-goers, and anyone else they could find to join in their crusade.  A few people decided to wander over closer to Enjolras and Combeferre, but not many.  Most of them seemed to think it was a losing fight, and that Les Amis must have a death wish if they thought they were going to fight it.

“This is a call to arms!” Enjolras declared, his voice carrying across the square.  “We are the last line of defense between Paris and the enemy!  We must fight, or we will lose France to the Nazis.  To arms, citizens!”

Through the chaos, Joly spotted Bossuet and Musichetta entering the square and immediately ran over to them, crying out with relief and embracing them both.

“What’s going on?” Bossuet asked, alarmed.

“The Nazis are invading France now,” Joly explained, his worry evident on his face.

“They’re still several days away though, aren’t they?” Musichetta asked.  “I mean doesn’t the city have time to…”

Joly interrupted her with a small shake of the head.  “The city isn’t doing anything.  Our government isn’t even here anymore: they’ve moved to Bordeaux.  Enjolras thinks the Nazis are going to march on Paris today or tomorrow, and no one but us is here to defend it.”

“So it’s up to us,” Bossuet stated.  It wasn’t a question, but Joly nodded anyway.

“Yes,” he confirmed.  “It’s up to us.”

~

The world was a blur of color and darkness.  Everything blended together and spun around confusingly, and nothing made sense.  Not like it made sense normally, but still, this time it was really baffling.  More so than normal.  Thinking about it made his head hurt like Hell, and he would have sworn he could hear his heart pounding in his ears.

Grantaire blinked a few times and squinted at his surroundings.  He saw several very tall stools around him, one of which had fallen over.  There was a wall next to him… or was that the bar?  Probably the bar… but why was it all the way up there?

Looking around, Grantaire realized he was on the floor.  Grabbing onto one of the stools – which really weren’t that tall, just standard bar stools – he pulled himself to his feet and leaned against the bar he had mistaken for a wall.  Things weren’t so blurry anymore, but his head still hurt tremendously.  He could still hear the pounding.

He recognized the place as the Café Musain’s front room, where he supposed he had been drinking last night… he really couldn’t remember.  He didn’t see anyone else around who could remind him, either.  Disoriented, he stumbled to the front door of the café and squinted out at the world outside.

When did the outside world get so bright?  Grantaire didn’t remember Paris being made entirely out of sunlight so blinding that it hurt to look at it.  Everyone seemed to be screaming everything they said, too.  He thought they were unnecessarily loud.

Courfeyrac hurried past, did a double take, then ran back to the door of the Musain.

“You’re awake,” he exclaimed, surprised.  “Good.  We need you, come on.”

“What?” Grantaire stammered, confused.

“It’s starting,” Courfeyrac explained.  “The Nazis are marching on Paris, Enjolras is gathering an army of the people, we’re going to fight, and we need you.  Come on!”

Grantaire shook his head.  “You don’t need me for that,” he insisted.  When Courfeyrac tried to persuade him, he attempted to explain himself by saying “I’d just get in the way.  And besides, I’m pretty sure Enjolras doesn’t want me there.”

“We want every citizen who can fight,” Courfeyrac argued.

“Not me.”

Courfeyrac sighed and ran off, muttering “fine, suit yourself,” under his breath.  He might be able to convince others to join Les Amis, after all, why waste his time with someone who was determined not to be of any help?

Grantaire groaned and retreated back into the café.

~

The Place de la Bastille surged with action: people ran past in quite a hurry, more frantic than they had been at the start of the day.  It began to look more and more like a city on the brink of chaos.  Les Amis frantically tried to make sure that chaos went well for them.

Enjolras stood on the base of the July Column, still giving the same passionate speech, and every member of Les Amis in the square tried desperately to get people to listen.  Finally, after fighting with an unwilling populace all morning, they had managed to get a few to join them.  Courfeyrac’s mad dash around the city helped a lot – even Marius and Cosette had shown up to help.

“We need to defend the outer city!” Bahorel cried over the clamor of voices.  “Block the roads so the Nazis can’t get in, even with their tanks!  Enjolras, you know what we need.”  His eyes glinted with anticipation of the answer.

Enjolras nodded.  “You’re right,” he said, carefully calculating the situation in his head.  Then, turning back to the crowd, he cried “Citizens!  _To the barricades!”_

Bahorel beamed with excitement and promptly led the charge, found a good street, and began tearing up paving stones.  Enjolras jumped down from the column and quickly joined him, examining the street with a critical eye, mentally constructing the barricade in his head.  When he had it, he began helping Bahorel and the others lay the foundation.

Gavroche appeared in the middle of the street and ran toward Enjolras, expertly making his way through the throng of people, but Enjolras was too busy to notice him there.

“It needs to stretch all the way across the street,” he explained to one woman, “and I think a minimum of ten feet high.  Remember, they have military-grade tanks.”

“Listen,” Gavroche tried to say, but no one could hear him.

“Young man, you are being very foolish right now,” a surly old man scolded, “if you think you and your friends can take on the German army alone…”

“We won’t be alone,” Enjolras told him, “if the citizens of Paris stand with us, we’ll have plenty of people to man these barricades.”

“Listen to me,” Gavroche pleaded.

“You’re all going to die,” the old man grumbled before wandering off towards his home.

“If the Nazis invade, a lot more people will die!” Feuilly called after him.

Gavroche called out again, but Enjolras had run off to help someone else.  Sighing, the child of Paris slipped through the crowd to find someone he knew would help him.

People rushed back and forth in a frantic hurry, trying not to run into each other in the crowded street.  On the sidewalk, Feuilly pleaded with some reluctant citizens, explaining why it was important that they fight.  Combeferre debated angrily with a very stubborn couple who refused to help, not wanting to get their hands dirty.  Bahorel and Enjolras tore up paving stones and demonstrated to everyone how best to stack them for a barricade.  Jehan handed a brick to one of the passersby, trying to get her to help, but she threw it back at him, saying “I’ll not be a part of your suicide mission.”  One man even snapped at Cosette, calling her a “stupid girl” when she tried to talk him into lending a hand.

“Enjolras, it’s not working,” Marius complained.  “These people aren’t going to help us.”

“It has to work!” Enjolras demanded, as furious as he was frustrated.  “We cannot afford to lose this battle.  I don’t think I need to explain what will happen if—”

“Hey everybody, listen up!” Courfeyrac shouted loud enough for them all to hear.  When everyone turned to look at him, they saw little Gavroche perched atop his shoulders, looking defiant, but also grave.  He looked straight at Enjolras as he made his announcement:

“They’re here.”

No one said anything for a moment as they took in his words.  Enjolras stared at Gavroche and Courfeyrac, almost disbelieving.  How could they be here already?  He glanced at the barricade again: it stood less than a foot high.  Low enough to step over on foot, it definitely wasn’t going to hold back any armies, much less any German tanks.  Did that mean they had failed?

All around him, people peeled away from the group, running toward their homes or lining up along the sides of the street to welcome the invading army and pretend to be collaborative.  No one except Les Amis remained by his side.

Enjolras called after the people, desperate now, but no one heeded him.

“It’s over,” one citizen told him.  “We can’t fight them.”

“I am not going to just stand by and let Paris fall!” Enjolras insisted.

“It’s fallen,” they said sadly.  “You need to accept that and go home before you get yourself and all of your friends killed.”  At that, they walked away, leaving Les Amis standing in the street among their unfinished, abandoned barricade.

In the distance, they could hear the sound of a large group of people marching military-style through empty streets.  Les Amis glanced at each other and saw fear in everyone’s eyes.  Courfeyrac put his arm around Gavroche protectively.  Marius gripped Cosette’s hand in his own as if he never intended on letting it go.  Everything was deathly quiet, and no one moved: they weren’t sure if they should flee or take up battle stations.

Then Feuilly took off running as fast as he could toward the factory district and his home.  Enjolras quickly bolted after him, calling his name.  Feuilly did not stop running until he reached his apartment, where he slammed into the door almost fast enough to knock it off its hinges, stumbled into his living room, and immediately started rummaging haphazardly through his things.

“Feuilly,” Enjolras cried as he burst into the room a few moments later, “ _mon ami,_ let me help you.”

“They’re going to come for me,” Feuilly gasped.  His heart pounded against his chest and his breaths came in short gasps.  He darted around his apartment as if frantically searching for something, knocking a lot of piles over in the process.

“What are you looking for?” Enjolras asked.

“If they get access to government records, then they’ll have my address and they are going to come for me!” Feuilly cried, his terror evident in his voice.  “I can’t be here when that happens.  I have to go.”

“Go where?”

“I… I don’t know.”  His whole body shook, and he accidentally knocked several fans off the table because of it.  Enjolras quickly stepped around the mess to kneel by his friend on the floor.  Gently, he took Feuilly’s hands in his and held them until they stopped shaking.

“You could come live with me,” he suggested quietly.

Feuilly’s eyes grew wide again.  “I couldn’t let you put yourself in danger for me!” he exclaimed.

“Don’t worry about that,” Enjolras said quickly.  “I can’t let you stay in the danger you’re already in.  There’s room for you at my place, I can hide you there, and you could be comfortable there.  Please, Feuilly.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you are my friend and I care about you,” Enjolras replied.

For a moment, neither of them said anything.  Then, suddenly, Feuilly hugged Enjolras and whispered, “thank you.”  After a brief pause, Enjolras hugged him back, but then gently pulled away.

“We need to leave,” he calmly reminded his friend.

Feuilly nodded.  “I need to find my bags…”

Enjolras picked up a bag which lay on the floor at his feet.  “Just pack whatever you can’t live without,” he advised.

Together, they gathered his necessary things and carried them outside.  Feuilly turned around for a moment to take one last look at his home before they left.  He had so many memories there, and, while not all of them were good, he cherished them.  He stood there, staring at the building and wondering when, or if, he would ever return.  Then Enjolras squeezed his hand and, together, they headed back out into the streets of Paris.


	5. Paris Occupied

Combeferre and Courfeyrac stood among the ruins of their barricade near the Place de la Bastille, looking around fearfully as the chaos unfolded around them.  After Enjolras and Feuilly left the barricade, everything had fallen apart.  Their friends had scattered.  Gavroche slipped into a skinny alleyway somewhere nearby and disappeared.  Cosette announced that her papa’s house would be the safest place for them, and she pulled Marius urgently towards the Rue Plumet.  Jehan bolted for the University, where he said he had left several poetry journals that he didn’t want the Nazis to find.  Bahorel grabbed Joly and Bossuet by their shirts and pulled them out of the street and out of the soldiers’ path, and they ran off toward the Café Musain as quickly as they could go without hurting Joly’s lame leg.  Musichetta, however, had run a different way, worried about racist vandals destroying her home.

“Someone’s gotta hold down the fort,” she declared, and she headed toward the place she shared with her two boyfriends.

“I’m going after Enjolras,” Combeferre announced.  “You can come with me or not, your choice.”

“Right behind you,” Courfeyrac called as the sound of Nazi war boots got closer and closer.

The two Amis slipped away from the barricade just as the army arrived, watching from the shadows as the tanks rolled right over their pile of stones.  In that moment, they knew it was a good thing the barricade was abandoned – none of them would have survived an encounter with those tanks.

Together, they walked at a brisk pace toward Feuilly’s apartment, trying not to draw too much attention to themselves.  They were right outside the factory district when they caught sight of Feuilly with Enjolras.  Each carried an over-packed bag, and Feuilly looked about to cry.  Enjolras walked in front, a defiant look on his face, as if daring someone to threaten them.

“You need to leave,” Combeferre announced as they approached.  “Now.  They’re coming.”

“We had to dodge some troops on our way here,” Courfeyrac added.

“We were just leaving,” Enjolras explained.  “He’s going to stay with me.  You’re both welcome to walk with us.”

“Please walk with us,” Feuilly pleaded.  He didn’t say how grateful he was for their extra support, but it showed in his face.

“Where is Jehan?” Enjolras asked.

“He ran to the University to get some things,” Courfeyrac replied.

“He needs to hide too,” Feuilly said.  “None of us are safe anymore.”  He sighed and looked over his shoulder again as they left the factory district that was his home.

“He can stay with me,” Combeferre said.  Then Combeferre and Courfeyrac fell in beside their friends as they made their way across Paris.

A Nazi regiment marched down the street in front of the Eiffel Tower, and the four Amis quickly jumped out of the way.  Enjolras grabbed Feuilly’s hand and pulled him off the street, but Combeferre and Courfeyrac leapt in the other direction.  Silently, Enjolras signaled for them to keep going, and he and Feuilly would find another way around.  Feuilly slipped into an alleyway to avoid the Nazis’ gaze, and Enjolras followed.

Putting the Eiffel Tower behind them, they hurried down the alleyway and onto a different street, where they slowed to a walk to avoid suspicion.  Still, they walked briskly, like two people with an urgent purpose, Feuilly’s bags slung over their shoulders as if they were just going to class.

As they rounded a corner, they saw an SS officer standing on the sidewalk, right in the middle of their path.  He wore a crisp grey uniform and freshly polished boots.  The bright red part of his armband stood out vividly against the rest of his clothing.  Feuilly gasped audibly, but Enjolras squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“Don’t look at him,” Enjolras muttered under his breath to his friend, “don’t acknowledge him.  Just walk around.”

They continued down the sidewalk, but the officer blocked their way, glaring at them suspiciously.  They tried to take a different path around, but he refused to let them progress.  Defiantly, Enjolras took a small step forward, so that he stood in between Feuilly and the Nazi.  Behind him, Feuilly tried to avoid eye contact with anyone while still appearing nonchalant.

“You are protecting that Jew, I see,” the Nazi observed.  He glanced at their entwined hands and scowled.

“He is my brother, and we’re not Jewish,” Enjolras attempted to lie.

“He shouldn’t be on the sidewalk.”

“He can walk wherever he wants to,” Enjolras retorted angrily.  “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re very busy…”

The Nazi stood firmly in the middle of the sidewalk.  When Enjolras tried to step around him, he moved to block the path again.

“Let us pass!” Enjolras demanded.

“I don’t think so.”

“We’re French citizens.  This is our sidewalk, and we have every right to—”

“Not anymore.  Now it belongs to the Third Reich.”

Enjolras balled his hand into a fist and glared at the Nazi in front of him.  Before he could throw the punch however, the Nazi punched him instead, sending him stumbling backwards into Feuilly, who steadied him quickly.  Enjolras responded by punching the Nazi as hard as he could in return.  The officer attacked Enjolras again, throwing him to the ground, but Enjolras stood up and fought back furiously.  Then the Nazi barked a command in German, and a few other soldiers hurried over, surrounding the two Amis. 

Feuilly sighed, then slipped his bag off his shoulder, gripped it tightly by the straps and spun around.  The bag picked up some momentum as he spun, and smacked one of the Nazis hard in the face.  It made a sickly crunching sound when it hit, and the man recoiled, his face covered in blood from a brand new gash on his nose.  He cursed in German and threw himself at Feuilly with a vengeance, but Enjolras leapt in between them, shoving his friend out of the way.

 _“Mon ami,_ RUN!” Enjolras commanded, tossing the other bag to him.

“But—”

“I’ll hold them off, just go!  NOW!”

Cursing under his breath, Feuilly ran with all his might, as fast as his legs would allow.  Behind him, he could still hear the brawl, and he winced every time Enjolras cried out in pain.  A few times, he even had to duck into an alleyway to avoid a group of soldiers.  He fervently prayed that they did not join in the fray.  He wasn’t sure how much Enjolras could take.

~

Grantaire caught a waitress’ eye as she passed near his table, carrying a tray.  “I need—”

“Water,” Joly interrupted, finishing his order for him.  “He needs a distinctly non-alcoholic glass of water.”

“Joly,” Grantaire complained.

“Grantaire,” Joly stated.

“Let me order a drink.”

“No.”

Grantaire sighed and looked at Joly with his best disgruntled glare.  Joly met his eyes and did not look away.  Seeing that he would get nowhere with this, Grantaire glanced at Bossuet for support.

“Don’t you dare encourage him,” Joly said to his boyfriend, while not taking his eyes off the drunkard in front of him.  “Grantaire, it’s not healthy.  Please listen to me, I have studied what alcohol does to a human liver, and at the rate you consume it, I am honestly surprised you’re still alive.”

“Spare me the lecture, you’re sounding like Combeferre,” Grantaire grumbled.

“Combeferre is a very wise young medical student who also knows exactly what he’s talking about!” Joly exclaimed.  “You should listen to us.”

“Aren’t any of you on my side here?”

“We’re all on your side here,” Bossuet assured him.

Bahorel slid into the booth next to Grantaire and put his arm around the other man’s shoulders in a friendly one-armed hug.  “R, when I got to this café this afternoon, you were the most hung over I have ever seen you,” he stated.  “And that includes every time we’ve gotten drunk together since we met.  You know I’m all for drinking with you, but… at the risk of sounding like Combeferre… another bottle of wine while you’re still hung over from the last five?  Not the best idea.”

Grantaire groaned and leaned on the table, holding his head in his hands.  He looked absolutely miserable.  Glancing at the waitress, Joly mouthed “glass of water,” and she nodded and hurried off to get one.

Jehan stumbled in just as the waitress returned, and pulled up a chair.  He breathed a sigh of relief as he sat down and leaned on the table for support.

“Wow, am I glad to see you guys in here,” Jehan exclaimed.  “It’s getting really scary out there.  Troops in the streets, no resistance…”  He shuddered.  “It’s like a nightmare.”  His friends all nodded their agreement.

“Have you seen Enjolras?” Bossuet asked.

Jehan shook his head.  “No, I just saw a lot of terrified citizens who were too scared to fight.  Well, and a lot of Nazis.  Enjolras is neither of those things.”  He pulled out the notebook he’d gone back for and began writing something in it, but the loud slam of the café door interrupted his thoughts.

Feuilly stood in the doorway, breathing heavily and clutching his two heavy bags close to his chest.  He shook with terror and fatigue, and the five Amis in the café jumped up to help him.  Bossuet took one of the bags, Bahorel another, and Jehan and Joly cleared a space at the booth for him to sit down.

“You should be careful,” Joly cautioned, looking worried.

“Enjolras is in danger,” Feuilly blurted out, still standing.

“What?” Grantaire exclaimed, looking up suddenly.

“He got into a fight with an SS officer on the sidewalk and then there were more and he told me to run,” Feuilly explained without stopping for a breath.

“Where?” Bahorel asked, rolling up his shirt sleeves.

“Where the Rue Bonaparte meets Saint Sulpice.”

“Alright guys, you heard the man,” Bahorel proclaimed.  “Let’s go help the chief.”  He headed for the door, ready for a fight, and Bossuet jumped up to follow him, pulling Joly along with him.

“We probably shouldn’t go back there,” Jehan whispered to Feuilly.  “Do you have somewhere you can go?  I’ll walk there with you.”  Feuilly nodded and whispered Enjolras’ apartment number in Jehan’s ear.  Jehan nodded his silent understanding.

“Grantaire, are you coming?” Bossuet asked on his way out the door.

Grantaire sighed again.  “Things like this,” he declared.  “This is why I drink.”  He tossed a few francs to the waitress, then grabbed a wine bottle from a nearby display and headed out after Bahorel’s party.  Jehan and Feuilly waited around for a few minutes, then slipped out themselves, each of them carrying one of the bags over their shoulders as Enjolras and Feuilly had done before.

~

Enjolras felt his head slam against something hard.  Whether it was a wall or the sidewalk, he didn’t know – directions all jumbled together in his brain, and he couldn’t tell up from down anymore.  He wasn’t even sure how many soldiers he was fighting.  He thought five, but it might be more than that.

He knew he had wounded several of them, but he also knew he had not done enough.  There were too many, and he was just one man.  His breathing came in painful gasps, and the world spun before him.  He fell to his knees before the officer who had thrown the first punch, peering up at the man through swollen eyes.

“Filthy race traitor,” the Nazi hissed.

Suddenly, Enjolras heard a thud and the crash of breaking glass, and a red liquid leaked down the Nazi’s face like blood.  The Nazi stumbled forward and then fell to the ground inches from where Enjolras knelt.  In his place stood Grantaire, holding half of a broken wine bottle.

“You look awful,” he told Enjolras.  Then he offered his hand.  Enjolras took it, and Grantaire pulled him to his feet.  Enjolras stumbled forward – he was still very dizzy from concussion and blood loss – and Grantaire caught him awkwardly.

“Oh God, there’s blood everywhere,” Grantaire mumbled.  “Is all this yours?  Can you walk?  Can you even stand?”

Enjolras tried to stand on his own, but his legs kept failing him.  When he insisted on taking a step on his own, he slipped in a pool of blood and wine, but two pairs of hands caught him before he hit the ground.

“Okay, it’s okay, just lean on me,” Joly’s voice said calmly.  “Dear lord, he’s right, your blood is everywhere.  Um, but I can help, just… Grantaire, help me move him out of here, please.”

Together, Joly and Grantaire moved Enjolras to a quieter spot down the street, then set him down in an alley.  Joly pulled out a rag and began cleaning the blood off his face.

“It’s not clean, but I don’t have anywhere else to work… Oh, Combeferre is NOT going to like this,” he muttered to himself as he worked.

Grantaire knelt next to Enjolras on the pavement and stared at his face.  Even covered in blood, he could tell this young revolutionary was far more attractive than Grantaire could ever hope to be.

“Oh, you complete and utter… _Achilles_.  What were you thinking?  You can’t take on five German soldiers alone, you beautiful idiot,” he mumbled under his breath, too quiet for Enjolras to hear.

“Grantaire, you don’t have to sit here if you don’t want to,” Joly began, but Grantaire interrupted him.

“No.  I’m staying.”

Joly shrugged and went back to work cleaning Enjolras’ wounds.

Down the street, the battle still raged.  Bahorel had thrown himself into the middle of the fray, taking on three Nazis at once.  Bossuet wrestled with the one that he and Joly had been fighting together, finally knocked him out, then joined Bahorel to help with his three.  One of the soldiers started shouting something in German.  Bahorel took him out quickly, but the message had been heard.  More German shouting echoed from the Rue Bonaparte.

“I think we should probably leave now,” Bossuet advised, staring in the direction of the shouts.

“Agreed,” Bahorel declared, and the two of them fled down the Rue Saint Sulpice, leaving the five soldiers they’d been fighting beaten and bloody, lying in heaps on the sidewalk.

They stopped running when they passed Joly’s makeshift emergency room, but only long enough to help Enjolras to his feet.  Bahorel and Grantaire both supported him while Joly and Bossuet led the way to his place.

~

Combeferre and Courfeyrac reached the rendezvous point long before anyone else, narrowly avoiding several soldiers on the way.  Enjolras had given Combeferre a key to his apartment a few years before, so, thankfully, they didn’t have to wait outside for their friends to appear.  Combeferre let them both in, and they sat on the couch while they waited, making awkward small talk to cover up their intense worry.

“It’s been too long!” Courfeyrac declared all of a sudden, standing and pacing across the room, his feelings clearly etched on his young face.

“You’re right, they should be here by now,” Combeferre had to admit.  He didn’t want to think about what could have caused their delay.

Just then, there came a knock at the door.  Courfeyrac glanced at Combeferre anxiously.

“If it was Enjolras, he would just walk in, right?” he asked.

“I should think so.  He lives here,” his friend agreed.  They stood there, silent for a few moments, wondering what they should do.

The knock came again, more urgently this time, and Courfeyrac answered the door.  Jehan and Feuilly ran into the room, breathing hard.  Feuilly dropped his bags on the floor immediately and collapsed from exhaustion, shaking.  Jehan shut the door behind them quickly and leaned against it, out of breath.  Courfeyrac immediately moved to comfort Feuilly.

“What happened?” Combeferre demanded.  “Where is Enjolras?”

Jehan and Feuilly exchanged uncomfortable glances.  “You tell him,” Feuilly whispered.

“No, you were there, you saw it,” Jehan replied, still out of breath.

“I can’t tell this story again today, Jehan, I just can’t.”

“Is he _alive?_ ” Combeferre asked.  Feuilly hesitated at first, and then decided to nod, although he wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

“That’s good at least!” Courfeyrac exclaimed, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and trying his hardest to keep everyone thinking positively.  His efforts only got some half-hearted nods from his friends this time, however, and when Feuilly admitted that Enjolras had gotten into a brawl with some of the soldiers, Combeferre lost what composure he had.

“We’re here!” Bossuet cried out as he and Joly entered the room, interrupting Combeferre’s worrisome rage.  “Combeferre, thank God, we were hoping you’d be here.  Hey, listen, Enjolras is going to need a chair to sit down in, he still can’t really stand on his own too well.”

“You should know that I already treated most of his more serious injuries,” Joly reassured his fellow medical student.  “Then again, it was in an alleyway, and I didn’t have all of my equipment with me…”

Just then, Enjolras limped through the door, still supported by Bahorel and Grantaire.  Joly had bandaged his most serious head wound, but already, some spots of red leaked through and stained the white strip of cloth a deep crimson.  One of his eyes was still mostly swollen, and an ugly reddish-purple bruise had begun forming there.  Blood dripped slowly from a cut on his lip, and he wiped it away on his sleeve.  He also had blood on both hands, leaking through the bandages, and he leaned heavily on Grantaire, since one of his ankles bent at an odd angle.  His clothing was torn, his knees bloody, and he took great, raspy breaths which made him wince.

Combeferre took one look at him and gave an exasperated sigh, then gestured to a chair.  Enjolras tried to walk to it without help, but his ankle refused to support his weight.  Instead of letting him hurt himself further, Bahorel and Grantaire helped him sit down, then got out of Combeferre’s way.

“Do I need to ask?” Combeferre asked as he prepared a wet rag.

“They threatened Feuilly.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to get yourself beaten half to death,” Combeferre argued, sitting down in front of Enjolras and gently wiping the blood off his face.

“They would have killed him,” Enjolras cried.  “I had no choice!  I was forced to watch as Paris fell, I wasn’t about to stand there and let my friend fall too!  Feuilly would have died if I hadn’t—”

“And you would have died too, did you ever think of that?”

“I don’t care,” he stated solemnly.

“Well, I—”

“Good,” Grantaire interrupted suddenly, cutting Combeferre off.  “Its good that you don’t care about dying.  Because that’s what’s going to happen.  The Germans are here, in Paris, and they aren’t going to leave anytime soon.  In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re being _occupied_ , and these soldiers aren’t the type to just sit back and let Paris be Paris while they’re here.  The German army rules through blood and fear, and they’re going to kill ruthlessly, I know because that’s what happened in the last war.  They’ve already defeated us.  Face it.  We lost.”

“No,” Enjolras declared.  “We haven’t.  The army lost this battle, true, and our government has fled, but the people are still here.  The children of our _Patrie._   And while there are still citizens in Paris, there is still hope.  We are not lost yet.  There is still something we, the people, can do.”

Feuilly looked at Enjolras, eyes glowing with a brightness they hadn’t shown since before the invasion of Poland.  “You mean…?”

Enjolras nodded, smiling slightly.  _“Vive la_ _Résistance_ _.”_


	6. The Girl from Montfermeil

In a small, secluded café in a pretty Parisian street, Marius and Cosette sat, enjoying the evening and talking about love and life.  Paris had been occupied for a week, and the tension between the French citizens and Nazis was almost tangible, but Marius and Cosette seemed to live in a world apart from all that.  Their laughter carried across the room and through the open window, where the girl sitting on the pavement outside could hear it.  She could also smell the fresh food, which made her stomach growl with hunger.  Squeezing her eyes shut and leaning her head against the stone of the café wall, she tried to forget about the hunger.  Of course, it steadfastly refused to go away.  It felt almost just like the other pain: the one which came from listening to Marius and Cosette’s romantic joy.

“Are you hungry, mademoiselle?” the café owner asked from the doorway.

“I haven’t got any money,” Éponine automatically replied.  The door closed soon after.  She didn’t have to look to tell that the owner had given up on her.

“Want this?” a familiar childlike voice asked.  She glanced up to see Gavroche standing over her, a mischievous grin on his twelve-year-old face and a freshly baked croissant in his hand.

“That’s yours,” she began to say, although she really did want it, but Gavroche just tossed the croissant to her.  She caught it clumsily before it hit the ground.

“I’ve got another one,” he explained cheerfully, revealing another croissant from inside his jacket.

“Where did you get these?”

“From that old bourgeois at the bakery down the street!” he cried happily.  “I just stopped by, it was on my way.  He doesn’t know they’re gone.”

“Didn’t even notice you there, did he?” Éponine asked, although she already knew the answer.

Gavroche smiled proudly.  “Only goes to show what little people can do!”

“That’s my little brother.”

“We could steal some cheese to go with this,” he suggested, bouncing excitedly.  “Maybe some fruit.  We could make an actual meal!”

Éponine’s eyes gleamed at the promise of a meal, and her stomach growled its agreement.  Besides, she knew how to steal, it shouldn’t even be hard.  And it would take her mind off of Marius, if only for a moment.

Together, she and Gavroche snuck around to the back of the café, where she knew there was a back door which led to the kitchens.  He slipped inside while she stood guard on the street outside, keeping watch for the police.  Ten minutes had barely passed before she saw two of them headed down the street in her direction.  One of them, who she recognized as Inspector Javert, was talking to the other one about some elusive convict called Jean something or other.

Stealthily, she tried to slip in the back door of the café without Javert noticing her so she could warn Gavroche, but the door creaked as she touched it, and she froze.

“What’s this?” Javert asked, looking at her.  “What is going on here?”

Thinking quickly, Éponine explained, “It’s nothing to worry about, Inspector, I work here and I was just taking the trash out, that’s all.  I’m going to have to talk to the café owner about this door: it creaks.  So if you’ll excuse me…”  She opened the door slightly farther as she spoke.

“I don’t think so,” he ordered.

“Can’t I get back to work?” she asked, clinging to the lie she’d invented.

“I know you,” Javert told her, his voice low and threatening.  “You’re Thénardier’s daughter, are you not?  I’ve arrested you before.”

“You’ve got the wrong girl.”

“I am never wrong,” he insisted.  “I know you, and you are a thief.”

“Even if I was this thief girl you think I am, aren’t you glad I found a job?” she asked the Inspector slyly.  “Aren’t you glad I’m not out causing mayhem in the streets anymore, or whatever it is that you think I did?  Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?  Reform or something?”  She crossed her arms over her chest as she said this, looking at Javert sassily.

“Once a thief, forever a thief,” Javert insisted.

“Wow, that’s not very forgiving of you!” she cried.  Javert looked furious.

From the rooftop of the house behind Javert, Gavroche waved to her, smiling broadly.  Internally, Éponine sighed with relief.  Her little brother was possibly even better at getting around Paris than she herself was, which was the reason why he hadn’t been arrested yet, the perpetual thorn in Javert’s side that he was.  Silently, she gave a secret signal for him to go get help, as she didn’t really know how to get herself out of the situation she now found herself in.  Gavroche disappeared, and she continued trying to reason with Javert.

“Éponine, what on Earth are you doing here?” Marius asked, confused.  Éponine looked at him, dismayed, trying to tell him silently that he wasn’t helping, but he didn’t seem to understand.

“Ah, so you _are_ Éponine Thénardier,” Javert said.  “You’re under arrest.”

“No, wait, Inspector!” Cosette exclaimed, running forward and placing herself in between Éponine and Javert.  “Please listen to me, I know this girl, and she’s not the one you want.  She hasn’t done anything wrong!”

Javert glanced at Cosette suspiciously.  “Éponine Thénardier is a wanted criminal,” he stated.

“She’s not Éponine Thénardier,” Cosette quickly explained.  “She’s here with us; we know her.  Please, let her go, she hasn’t done anything.”

It took a while to convince him, but eventually, Javert backed down, and he and his fellow officer walked away down the street.

“That is _not_ who I meant when I told you to go find help, Gavroche,” Éponine whispered, annoyed.

Marius shuffled his feet awkwardly, mumbling an apology.  Then he stopped, looked at Cosette, and cried “you just lied to a police officer!”

Cosette looked serene as she explained, “well, Gavroche came to you for help.  I didn’t think you’d want her to be arrested, so I did what I could.  And besides, I always do what I can to help my fellow ladies.”  Glancing at Éponine, she added, “All of them.”

As Marius and Cosette discussed this, Éponine sat down in the gutter, drenching her already tattered dress.  She seemed not to notice.  Gavroche walked over to his sister and silently offered her the fruit and cheese that he’d managed to steal.  She split it in half and handed half of it back, insisting that he take it.

Cosette glanced at Éponine.  “Are you hungry?” she asked.  “I could buy you something to eat.”

“I’ve already got my dinner for tonight, thank you,” Éponine muttered in clipped tones, not wanting to look at the other girl.

“That’s hardly enough for a person to eat,” Cosette noticed.  “Come on, let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Cosette knelt on the cold cobblestones behind the café and gazed at Éponine with kind eyes.  She saw a poor girl who, from the looks of it, was starved half to death, desolate, and alone.  Knowing Éponine’s family all too well, Cosette had no trouble believing that.  She remembered her time with the Thénardiers, how they had starved her, hit her, and abused her at every turn, and how they had no problem using her to further their own selfish goals.  She guessed Monsieur Thénardier would not hesitate to use his own daughter that way as well.  The look she offered Éponine was one of sympathy.

“I remember you,” she told the girl.  Éponine glanced at her with a look full of both confusion and alarm.  “I remember the house in Montfermeil, your parents’ inn, all the decorations on its walls.  I remember the guests and how they treated me.  And I remember you.  You always got new dresses while I had to wear hand-me-down rags.”  Éponine glued her eyes on the gutter rather than look Cosette in the eye.

“You should know that I don’t blame you for anything,” Cosette continued.  “Your parents, yes, but not you.  I’ve never hated you for anything, Éponine.  And actually, I remember thinking you were quite pretty in those dresses.”

“But look at me now, right,” Éponine mumbled.

“I _am_ looking at you now,” Cosette replied, “and I see someone who has a lot of talent.  You could do really great things, you know.  You and Gavroche have a beautiful relationship, and if what he said to Marius is true, you’ve developed a series of silent hand signals?  That’s amazing, brilliant thinking.  You’ve got so much potential – you could be _magnifique!_   But only if you get up out of that gutter.”  She offered her hand and, after a moment, Éponine took it.

“I can’t go to any restaurants dressed like this,” she pointed out, gesturing to her soaking wet rags.

“That’s quite alright,” Cosette assured her.  “Come with me.  You’re rather skinnier than me, but I think I’ve still got some things that would fit you.”  With that, they walked off arm in arm to the Rue Plumet, Marius and Gavroche trailing behind.

~

A few hours later, the girl who stood in the parlor of the house on Rue Plumet was almost unrecognizable.  She wore a nice navy blue dress with a skirt that swished around when she twirled.  Cosette had convinced her to take a bath as well, and had dragged a brush through her unruly hair.

“There, now you look like a proper Parisian!” Cosette exclaimed.

Éponine gave Cosette a look.  “I don’t need a fancy dress with a nice skirt to be a proper Parisian,” she grumbled, crossing her arms.  “I know Paris like the back of my hand.  I know the quickest ways to get in and out of any building in the city, and the best twisting alleyways to get me anywhere I want to go.  The streets of Paris are my streets, the city is my city, and that’s what makes me a ‘proper Parisian,’ not your bourgeois clothing.”

Cosette sighed.  “’Ponine, I am truly sorry if I offended you.  I did not mean to offend.  And honestly, I think it best we put the past behind us.  This is not Montfermeil, and I don’t want to fight with you.  Actually, I’d very much like to be your friend.”

The other girl thought about it for a moment, then slowly nodded.  “Alright,” she muttered, hesitantly.  “Friends, then.  But I’ll warn you now, if you try getting any smart ideas about being better than me, I’m tougher than I look and I won’t tolerate being used or left out to dry.”

“I don’t want to mistreat you,” Cosette promised.  “I want to work with you.  As equals.”

“Oh, equality, is it?  Now you’re starting to sound like Marius’ friends.”

“I’ve met them,” Cosette said.  “They’re good people.”

“Okay,” Éponine admitted.  “I think we can try being friends.”


	7. The Flame of the Resistance

On June 22nd, all of Les Amis gathered in Enjolras’ apartment.  Monsieur and Madame Enjolras had given their son a radio to use as he pleased, and today, he was not about to miss the BBC’s political report.  Charles de Gaulle was in London, and the BBC was broadcasting his speech tonight.  Even though the occupying army had forbidden it, Les Amis had found a way to listen.

De Gaulle’s words invoked the patriotic spirit of France, and its great need for liberty, expressing the unspoken desires that all the young men gathered there held dear.  He talked about Poland, and Feuilly gripped Enjolras’ hand tightly.  He spoke of the French fatherland, _la Patrie,_ and Enjolras had to wipe away a tear.  He mentioned the Empire and France’s former greatness, and Marius smiled to himself.  At the end of the speech, they turned the radio off, and sat in awed silence for a few moments.

Then, Enjolras stood up.

“My friends,” he began, “I think this could be the dawning of a new era.  General de Gaulle echoes words I myself have said many times over: this is a call to arms.  You know that as well as I, so I won’t bother going into details again.  But I think it is important that we remember this man’s words.”  Then, in a few long strides, he crossed his living room and stood on top of his own dining table, clutching his discarded jacket as if it were a flag.

“Whatever happens, the flame of the French Resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished!” he cried, quoting words de Gaulle had said.

“Better hope it doesn’t rain, then,” Grantaire muttered from the back, earning a few chuckles from Joly and Bossuet.

“We need to get ahead of the Nazis,” Enjolras continued, ignoring the cynical remark. “We have allies across Paris, a network of Resistance fighters ready to work with us – thank you, Courfeyrac – but we need a plan.  We need to be able to communicate with them.”

“Move your mouth and use vibrations from your voice box that sound like words,” Grantaire sassed.  “I find that usually helps me communicate better.  Like this.  Do you have any wine?”

“Let me specify – we need to communicate with them _secretly._ ”

“Underground carrier pigeons,” the skeptic suggested off-hand as he rummaged through the cupboards.  “Oh wait, never mind, I found the wine.  Red, of course.  Everything of yours always is.”  He held up a bottle of good red wine from Enjolras’ cabinet.

“Actually, he might have a point there, about the underground movement,” Combeferre cut in.  “But not pigeons.  People.  Underground resistance fighters carrying letters back and forth with updates.”

“That would be so dangerous!” Joly cried, alarmed.

“The cold boots of the Germans trample our bluebells in their fields of sun, and darkness descends upon the land,” Jehan recited, his voice almost a whisper.  “We must combat them at every turn, or it will engulf us all.”

“Uh, don’t you think that might be a little morbid?” Joly asked.

“Not too morbid for this,” Jehan replied.  “I’ve been working on writing a piece about it.”

“Jehan is right,” Enjolras agreed.  “France’s state of affairs is darker now than it has ever been before.  We need this resistance now more than ever.  And the carriers would all be volunteers, of course.  This is war, there is going to be danger.  We all need to understand the price we might pay.”

“I would volunteer,” Courfeyrac offered.

“So would I,” Bossuet announced, glancing at Joly.

“We need a plan to fight these fascist bastards,” Bahorel said.

“Let’s just get them all drunk!” Grantaire exclaimed, laughing and climbing onto a table himself, standing opposite Enjolras.  Enjolras glared at him, crossing his hands over his chest and sighing with exasperation.

“What?” Grantaire asked.  “It’s as great a plan as any.  If you get the Nazis drunk, they won’t be paying attention, and then you and Bahorel and a couple other fighters could just go in and take them out while they’re asleep.  I say go for it!  Three cheers for French wine!”

“Is there a reason you are being so difficult today?” Enjolras asked.

“What?  I’m being honest,” the cynic replied.  “You wanted me to be here today, so I’m here, and I’m speaking my mind.  I didn’t want a war, but now there is one, and you want us to fight in it, so I’m doing my best, alright?  And this is my battle plan.  Just get all the Nazis drunk.”  He started giggling drunkenly.  “It would be hilarious.”

“Be serious!” Enjolras cried.

“I am wild,” Grantaire retorted, smiling and raising the bottle for a toast.

Just then, a loud knock at the door interrupted them.  Grantaire called out “who is it?”

“The S.S.,” a Germanic voice replied in broken French.  “Open the door.”

Suddenly, the room was a flurry of motion.  Feuilly jumped up first and fled to the small bedroom he’d been sharing with Enjolras.  Bossuet and Musichetta both managed to squeeze into a closet together, and stood there, pressed tightly against each other, among Enjolras’ astonishingly large collection of red and black vests.  Joly helped them close the closet door, then took a seat on the couch nearby, hiding his cane behind the couch and deciding that if he didn’t move, they wouldn’t notice his disability.

Combeferre and Courfeyrac quickly helped Enjolras roll up all his maps of Paris and stack them in a corner.  Grantaire climbed down from the table and plopped down on the couch beside Joly.

“Should I hide this?” Jehan whispered, worried.  He held up his poetry notebook.  It was almost entirely full of love poems, some of which were about France, but most of which were about other young men.

Bahorel nodded.  “Probably, you don’t want them finding that and reading it.  Put it under the chief’s law school books, no one wants to touch those.”

“I don’t think the Nazis are afraid of law school,” Jehan muttered, but he hid the notebook there anyway, then slipped into the bedroom to hide with Feuilly.

The knocks came again, and the SS officer called out impatiently.  Enjolras cast his eyes quickly around the room to make sure nothing was out of place, then went to answer the door.

“ _Bonjour,_ ” he greeted, trying not to sound as anxious as he felt.  “Can I help you?”

Two Nazis, one in black and one in grey, swept into the room, ignoring Enjolras’ question, and not waiting for an invitation to enter, either.  They looked taken aback when they saw seven young men in the living room – they were not expecting to find so many people in one apartment.  Still, it did not stop them from inspecting everything in the room, from the cabinets to the carpet to the French flag hanging on the wall.

“Which of you is the one who lives here?” the SS officer in black asked while his grey-coated gestapo friend examined the room.

“I am,” Enjolras declared.

“And… you are?”

“Jean Enjolras.  I’m a student here in Paris.”

“And, Herr Enjolras… why are there so many people in your home today?”

Enjolras kept his head high, looking the Nazi in the eyes with a serene gaze while his mind frantically tried to come up with an excuse.  He didn’t know what to say.  All he knew was that he was not about to betray the ideals he and his friends stood for.  But what reason would they believe?

“It’s my birthday!” Grantaire cried from across the room, drawing all the attention away from Enjolras.  Holding his wine bottle high, he added, “this is my present from Enjolras.”

“We’re a fraternity,” Joly explained.  “We’re all students, and we’re all friends.”

“Oh wow, is this one of your birthday presents, too?” the gestapo officer inspecting the room asked Grantaire, holding up a painting that had been leaning against the wall.

Grantaire looked down.  “No, that’s… that’s actually mine.  My own work.”

“You painted this?” the gestapo man asked.  “It’s very good.  Did you paint that one, too?”  He gestured to a framed painting on Enjolras’ wall.

“No, that’s Delacroix,” Grantaire replied.  He felt proud, but his voice held a hint of sadness as well.  “That’s Liberty Leading the People, a famous French painting from the 19th century.  Nothing of mine is good enough to grace Enjolras’ wall.”

“That’s too bad!  I think you are a great artist, judging by this…”

“Ludwig, now is not the time,” the SS officer reprimanded in German.

“I can’t appreciate art?”  The one called Ludwig raised his eyebrows skeptically.  “The Führer appreciates art.”

“Remember why we are here,” the SS officer scolded, very sternly.

“Of course,” Ludwig muttered, then switched back to French.  “We are looking for fugitive Jews.  You wouldn’t know where any are, would you?”

All of Les Amis immediately shook their heads.

“Check the bedroom,” the SS officer ordered.  As Ludwig entered the bedroom, an awkward silence fell.

“Hey, do you want some wine?” Grantaire offered the SS man.  He shook his head brusquely and began walking slowly around the room, inspecting the things that Ludwig had already inspected.

He stopped when he got to the bookshelf, where a marble bust stood on display among Enjolras’ collection of philosophical republican writings.

“Who is this?” the Nazi asked.

“That’s Maximilien Robespierre, one of the greatest—”

“Don’t get him started, oh my God,” Grantaire called out.  “He’ll never finish.”  Enjolras cast an annoyed glance at him, but said nothing.

“Robespierre is an 18th century French lawyer and politician,” Courfeyrac explained, leaning nonchalantly on the bookshelf.  He purposefully left Robespierre’s revolutionary legacy out of his description.  “Enjolras and I are students of law, so we study him together.”

“That is all you are?” the Nazi asked.  “Students of law?  Friends?  A fraternity?  Celebrating this man’s birthday?”

“Is that not enough?” Courfeyrac raised his eyebrows.

“We’re relatively simple people, monsieur,” Bahorel added.  “For you, perhaps the army is exciting.  It can bring you glory.  I understand that.  But for us, a few friends and a few good drinks is enough.”

Ludwig emerged from the bedroom and shook his head.  “There is nothing,” he reported.  “This apartment is clean.”

“Well, gentlemen, thank you for your time,” the SS officer said, and then both of them left just as they had come.

As one, Les Amis exhaled.  Bossuet and Musichetta tumbled out of the closet, arms wrapped around each other so tight it took a while for them to untangle.

The door to the bedroom creaked slightly, and Feuilly’s head peered out from behind it, followed by Jehan’s.  At once, everyone in the room gave them the biggest and warmest group hug either of them had ever experienced.  They laughed and cried, and didn’t pull apart for a good five minutes.

“We’re good!” Jehan cried.  “Right?  They said the place was clean!”

“We still need to watch our backs,” Combeferre warned.  “This isn’t over.”

Feuilly nodded.  “It’s far from over, but I think it will be manageable with all of us working together.  Since they inspected this apartment and didn’t find us, we can stay here.  They shouldn’t look for us here again.  We can pull raids on their supplies and army camps by night to weaken them, and in the meantime, figure out a long term plan to fight this war.”

Somehow, Feuilly being hopeful made the rest of them hopeful as well.

“Well,” Enjolras declared, “everyone knows the plan, let’s get to it.  We have no time to lose.”


	8. A Journalism Student Who Knows His History

The sun had long since set by the time the janitor made his rounds.  He swept every hallway and every classroom at the École Supérieure de Journalisme, then swept them again.  Something in him whispered that he should be heading home, but another part of him insisted that he should stay and finish his job.  After all, it was already after curfew, but he was inside the school, and a few extra rounds wouldn’t hurt.  Besides, he was just doing his job.  Surely the Nazis couldn’t fault him for that.

“They’re not even here,” he mumbled to the walls of the journalism school as he swept the halls.  The school was deserted, and he could do his job in peace.  Just himself and the grand interior of the ESJ Paris.

He whistled softly to himself as he cleaned dust off the old printing press in the basement storage room.  The whistling became muttered singing, which picked up volume as he neared the chorus.

 _“Aux armes, citoyens,”_ he sang as he gently handled the printing press.  He supposed he didn’t even need to bother with it, but he did anyway.  He liked the thing.

Suddenly, something bumped in the hallway, and the janitor dropped his work and ran out to see what it was.  He paused halfway through the door, turned around, and grabbed his broom again – he felt more secure with something in his hands.  Then he rounded the corner, armed with the broom, not knowing what he would find.

He found a young student lying on the floor, sprawled unceremoniously underneath a window which looked like it had been awkwardly opened from the outside of the building.  This student got to his knees, then carefully stood up and found his bearings again.  The janitor actually recognized him – in fact, he felt sure he had spoken to this particular student before.  This one had seemed very interested in the old printing press.

“There’s a curfew, you know,” the janitor said, somewhat sternly.

“I know,” the student whispered, glancing around at the hallway, the window, the janitor, and then down, as if glancing at his own shoes.  “I’m sorry if, uh… if this causes problems…”

The janitor sighed and walked over to the window, pulling it closed with the end of his broom.  Then he turned back to the student.

“Prouvaire, isn’t it?” he asked.  Jehan nodded.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re breaking into your own college after hours?”

Jehan ran his hands through his hair and sighed.  Finally, he looked back up at the janitor and made a decision.

“Yeah,” he explained.  “I need to use the printing press.  You know, the one you told me about earlier this week.”

The janitor raised his eyebrows at Jehan, but the student just stared back.  His facial expression told the man how serious he was, and it also suggested that there was much more to the story that he wasn’t going to talk about.

“Honestly, I don’t know how it works,” the janitor admitted then.  “I just keep it cleaned.”

“I know how it works,” Jehan promised, the serious expression still on his face.  After a few more tense, silent moments, the janitor decided it wouldn’t hurt to show him where it was.  After all, he kind of liked this particular kid.

He turned and headed back down the hall, gesturing for Jehan to follow him, and together, they walked to the room with the printing press.  Jehan smiled brightly when he saw it, crossed the room, and ran his hands along its surface, admiring the craftsmanship of the thing.  His eyes sparkled with delight, and eagerly, he pulled out his notebook and began arranging the type to spell out words he had handwritten earlier.

The janitor went back to his sweeping, still humming as Jehan got to work printing the words.  Several hours passed in this way, until finally, he returned to the storage room and leaned his broom against the wall.

“Uh, Prouvaire,” he muttered, not wanting to disturb the student, who was still hard at work.  “I was about to head out.  Do you need me to leave some lights on for you or something?”

“I’m almost done, actually, if you’ll just give me a few minutes…” Jehan said as he pulled the printing press’ lever with all his might.  Then he pushed it back and slid his paper out of the machine.  The paper made a sticking sound as he gently pulled it off the press, and he blew on the ink gently as he laid it out to dry.

The janitor could see several sheets of paper laid out around the room, all with ink on them, arranged in the same fashion.  Carefully, he crossed the room and picked up one piece of paper.  “What is this you’re working on, anyway?” he asked the student.

Jehan panicked and began frantically stacking the dried papers in a pile.  “Oh, uh, it’s nothing, really.  It’s just a, um, a project that I’ve been wanting to try.  Part of, uh, History of Journalism.  I wanted to print something on the old press… you know, like Camille Desmoulins used in the, uh…”

“ _La France Libre_ ,” the janitor read out loud.

“Y-yes, uh, about that,” Jehan stammered, seizing the paper back, “it’s for the history project, you see… that was the name of Camille’s pamphlet…”

“It’s also the name of De Gaulle’s force,” the janitor whispered, choosing to ignore the fact that this student seemed to be on first name terms with Citizen Desmoulins for this moment.

Jehan tried to come up with another excuse, but the janitor cut him off.  “It’s okay, I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone,” he promised.  “You can consider me a friend.”  Jehan breathed a sigh of relief.

“Do you need anything else from me, or are you done for tonight?” the janitor asked.

“Actually,” Jehan replied, thinking as he spoke, “what nights do you work here?  Could you let me in again next week, to do the same thing?”

The janitor smiled, and then nodded.  Then he helped Jehan gather his papers and put everything else away.  When they walked out the side door together, the poet whispered a heartfelt “thank you very much,” before running off and disappearing into the night.

The janitor locked the door behind him and headed home, the words “Free France” etched into his brain, like the poet’s ink on the inside of his eyelids.  He could think of nothing else.

~

The secret printing job was not the only covert action going on that night.  On the outskirts of Paris, Bahorel, Feuilly, and Enjolras sat crouched behind some bushes, watching the road below carefully for any sign of movement.  They had set up a meeting here, but they couldn’t risk waiting in plain sight for their contacts to arrive.  It was not that kind of meeting.

After a while, Feuilly saw movement in the street below and nudged Enjolras, pointing.  A car had pulled up and stopped, and three people had gotten out to look around the area.  Feuilly could tell the people had guns on them, but they didn’t look like they were wearing any particular uniform.

Without leaving his shelter, Bahorel called out a greeting to these people in Spanish.  They quickly turned to look his way, and one of them returned his call.  Then Bahorel stepped out from the bushes, gesturing for Feuilly and Enjolras to follow him, and met the people in the street.

“ _Hola amiga!_ ” he cried as he got close enough to recognize her.  Then, while Feuilly and Enjolras emerged from the bushes behind him, Bahorel gave the Spanish resistance fighter a bear hug right in front of her troops.

“It’s good to see you again, Jean,” she told him after they separated.  “Last time we saw each other, we were fighting fascists in my home country.  Now we’re fighting them in yours.”

“She and I fought near Madrid together,” Bahorel informed his other friends.  “Now she’s promised to help us kick the Nazis out of France.  Just because she’s awesome like that.”

“Because it’s necessary,” the Spanish resistance fighter added.

“We thank you for it,” Enjolras told her, smiling.  “We are going to need all the help we can get.”

“Yes,” she agreed.  “You are.  Which is why my people and I have brought you some weapons you can use in the fight.”  She walked around to the back of the car and pulled the trunk open, revealing two crates full of small handheld guns and rifles as well as the ammunition to go with them.  The crates also held a few plastic explosives.

Enjolras and Feuilly picked up a few of these weapons and inspected them closely as the Spanish fighter explained where she’d gotten them.  Nodding, both Amis gave their stamp of approval and accepted the Spanish gift to the Resistance.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Bahorel said as they stood there inspecting the cache of weapons.  “How about we go on a raid together, like old times?  Just for tonight.”

Everyone smiled at his suggestion.  “I think that sounds like a wonderful idea,” Enjolras said.

Moments later, the three French Amis and the three Spanish maquis stormed into a small Nazi outpost outside the city.  It had a military barracks and several roadblocks set up, but they proved not to be a problem for the forces of the anti-fascist resistance coalition.  The six of them split up and snuck through the darkness in silence until they were right up on the Nazi camp, then took out the guards as quietly as possible without rousing everyone in the barracks.  Then Enjolras, Feuilly, and the Spanish fighters broke into the Nazi medical center while Bahorel stood outside to raise the alarm if they were found out. 

Feuilly opened a cabinet which turned out to be full of penicillin.  He began grabbing as much as he could carry while the others searched the rest of the facility for worthwhile supplies their people could use.  Then, the Spanish resistance leader appeared next to him with a crate full of surgical equipment and gestured for him to drop his pile of penicillin into it as well.  When they left, each of the four of them had either a crate or an armful of medical supplies to bring back to their respective hidden bases.

The call of an owl echoed from the woods nearby, and the five resistance fighters slipped back out of the camp the way they had come in – shrouded in shadow, guarded by the night.  The owl call had been made by their sixth comrade, and it told them that it was time to go.  Bahorel nodded at them when they emerged from the medical facility, telling them that the coast was clear and they could make their retreat to the woods.  Evidently, the Nazis in that particular outpost were all asleep in their barracks – well, except for the guards, who would not be warning anyone of anything for quite a while.

Victorious, the six of them ran back to where they had hidden the car.  They piled the stolen medicines into the trunk with the weapons, then all six of them piled into the car.  Enjolras showed the driver how to get to the Café Musain from where they were, and they headed into the city, singing uplifting protest songs all the way into Paris.

~

In the basement of the Café Musain, Combeferre and Joly were hard at work too.  Earlier that evening, Combeferre had succeeded in convincing Madame Hucheloup to lend them a few tables, and now he and Joly were trying to figure out how best to arrange them so that people could still walk around the area.  They were trying to make this small hidden room look as much like a medical center as possible.

“I wish we could have actual hospital beds,” Joly muttered as they rearranged yet another table so that it faced North to South.  “Those would be so much better for the patients we’re going to get.  These tables are just hard wood, and they’re not meant for lying down on.  They’re going to be so uncomfortable.”

“I know,” Combeferre agreed, “but they’re what we have.  Personally, I just wish we had more supplies for this place.  It’s not going to do people much good if all we can offer them is a couple of bandages, a drink, and a place to lie down.”

Joly was about to nod his agreement when the door opened, and six people poured into the small basement room.  Enjolras came first, his face bright with pride as he led the procession of maquis carrying their crates of stolen medical supplies.  As he and Feuilly presented Combeferre and Joly with these, Bahorel and the Spanish resistance leader slipped over to a different room with the two crates of weapons.  They didn’t want to mix their plastic explosives with their healing salves.

The Spanish maquis stayed long enough to help Les Amis get their things set up, and then they left with a promise to come back at any time the Amis needed their help with something.  When they were gone, Feuilly turned to Combeferre and Enjolras, a look of joy on his face.

“ _Mes amis,_ look what we have now!” he cried.  “This is fantastic!  I’d call this a successful night’s work.”

“Very successful,” Combeferre agreed, “and it’s not even done yet.”

~

Courfeyrac and Jehan practically skipped into the Café Musain at the end of their night, brimming with good news for their friends.  “I managed to contact some other Resistance cells in Paris,” Courfeyrac blurted out, “and they want to ally with us!  We have a network now, with people spread all over the city.”

“And we put up hundreds of these flyers all over the place,” Jehan added, handing his last flyer to Enjolras in triumph.  It was the same one he had designed earlier that day in his notebook, and the same one he had printed on the press at the journalism school.  Enjolras took the flyer and smiled when he saw its headline.

 _“La France Libre,”_ he whispered.  “Very good.”

“Well, _mes amis,”_ Joly said, yawning, “this has been a really great night.  I’m going to bed now.  In the morning, may the people of Paris wake to the knowledge that at least some of us are fighting.”

“Hopefully it will embolden them,” Combeferre added.  “Spur them to action.”

Feuilly nodded, a far-off look in his eye.  “Let’s spur them to action,” he said.  “We’re going to need them with us.  We have a Resistance to win.”

Everyone there could agree with that statement.  It had become the most crucial part of all of their lives now.  They had a Resistance to win.


	9. A Woman's Place is in the Resistance

Gavroche sat on top of the table, cross-legged, picking pieces off of a roast chicken with his hands and nibbling at them, then licking the grease from his fingers.  Nearby, Marius sat talking to Cosette’s father, a burly, intimidating man whose scowl could make anyone shiver.  Right now, though, he just looked thoughtful.  He listened intently to what the younger man had to say, while Gavroche hummed playfully.

“Ah, Marius, papa!” Cosette greeted, kissing each of them on the cheek.  “I hope you two are getting along?”

“I was just explaining your idea to your father,” Marius told his girlfriend, smiling.  When she heard that, Cosette glanced at her adoptive father, eager to see what his opinion was.

“So, papa, do you think it could work?” she asked, giving him a sweet, hopeful look which melted his heart.

“I don’t know, Cosette,” Jean Valjean sighed.  “This is very dangerous, it would attract the attention of the police, and if we are caught…”

“Éponine will warn us beforehand if the police arrive.  We will have time to hide what needs to be hidden.  I trust her on this, she’s very good at it.”  She cast a glance at Éponine as she said this, and smiled warmly.

“How are we to accommodate so many people?” Valjean asked.

“I have gathered all our extra blankets and pillows, and cleared out the guest room and a space in the basement for them,” Cosette explained.  “There is also that secret little shed in the garden that no one can get to except by coming through the house.  I’ve cleaned it up a little and I think it would make a perfect place to hide people as well.  Oh, and Gavroche secured enough food for us to make a feast!”

“Stolen food,” he stated.  It was not a question.  He knew.

“Is that a problem?”

Valjean sighed again.  He knew he could not reasonably protest this without being hypocritical.  He also knew the refugees Cosette wanted to shelter would be in desperate need of that food.

“Are you sure you can manage preparing everything?” he asked.

“Well, I’ll have help of course,” she replied, looking at Marius pointedly.  “And besides, I _like_ doing this type of thing, papa.  It’s like preparing for a party!  Well, except that you can’t tell the authorities about your party, and you have to prepare for it secretly.”

The old man finally nodded, and everyone relaxed a little.

“Okay, so Gavroche and I are like, what?  Field agents?” Éponine wanted to know.  “And you’re like mission command or something?”

“Is that okay with you?” Cosette asked.  She didn’t want to offend the other girl.

Éponine shared a glance with her little brother and nodded, and they both smiled.

“It’s perfect.”

~

They got started the very next night.  Cosette had learned from talking to people at the market that the Dreyfus family had mysteriously disappeared from their house and no one knew where they had gone.  She shared this information with Éponine when they met up in the square a few moments later, and Éponine learned from talking to people in hidden alleyways that the Dreyfuses were hiding in a back room at their local synagogue.  When darkness fell, Éponine crept through the alleyways she had come to know so well, avoiding the police and the soldiers as she made her way to the synagogue.

Gavroche sat perched on a rooftop across the street, watching everything incredibly carefully.  When he saw his sister looking out from the shadows one block away from the synagogue, he whistled once to get her attention, then made a series of hand signals that meant the coast was clear.  Swifter than a rabbit on the run, ‘Ponine slipped into the synagogue without anyone seeing her.

No one held services at this temple anymore, but the light was still on when she walked in.  It cast a soft glow on the walls as she walked by.  Éponine had never been much of a religious person herself, but she couldn’t help but admire the beauty of this place.  Someone had clearly built this with great care and love, and someone had dedicated themselves to taking care of it.

Quietly, she walked around the sanctuary, looking for any places where a family might be hiding.  Anyone else may not have found them, but Éponine Thénardier was not “anyone else.”  She knew good hiding places, and she knew the thought processes of a group of people hiding from the police.  It was not long before she found three of the Dreyfuses in their tucked-away shelter.

“Stop,” a male voice from behind her said, and she turned.  Monsieur Dreyfus stood there, looking scared but also bold.  “Stay away from my family,” he demanded.  “Who are you?”

“You don’t have to worry,” she promised.  “I’m a friend.”

“I don’t know you,” the man said.  “What do you want from us?”

“To help,” she began to say, but at that moment, Gavroche burst into the synagogue, skidding to a halt in front of her. 

“Nazis on the march,” he told his sister, “only a block away and coming fast.”

Éponine turned back to the Dreyfus family with urgency in her eyes.  “You heard that,” she told them.  “If I could find you in here, so can they.  Follow me, I know a safehouse and we can hide you better than this.”

With that, she bolted for the door, not even checking to see if they were following her.  She gestured for Gavroche to take a lookout post again, and he scampered back up onto the rooftops across the street.  He glanced around, then pointed East.  Éponine ran East, sticking to the shadows as much as she could.

She heard running footsteps behind her and glanced back.  The four Dreyfuses had decided to follow after all.  She gestured for them to catch up, then glanced at the rooftops again.  Gavroche was jumping from roof to roof, keeping an eye on the soldiers for her and gesturing which way was clear to go.  All of them ran through the Paris streets and alleys in this fashion until they finally made it back to the Rue Plumet.

Cosette was waiting at the door for them.  She had a warm home-cooked meal and the beds already made.  They all ate dinner together, and when the Dreyfuses went to bed, Éponine headed back out into the streets.

“Hey,” Cosette called after her.  “You could sleep here too, you know.  Where are you going?”

“Are you kidding?” Éponine laughed, smiling at Cosette in a mischievous way.  “I’m going out to defy some more fascists, patrol some more streets.  This is the most fun I’ve had in ages!”  Besides, she thought to herself as she ran off, the streets had always been more of a home to her than anyone’s house had been.  This is where she felt alive.

Jean Valjean came up and stood beside Cosette at the window as they watched Éponine disappear into the darkness.  “What’s the plan now?” he asked his adopted daughter.

Cosette smiled at him with the grace of a woman who knows exactly where she wants to be in life.  “I suppose now we have to plan for the next event.  Someone has to get the Dreyfuses across the country and into Switzerland, or perhaps Britain or somewhere else that’s safe.  There will be more families like them.  In the morning, we’ll see what kind of intelligence ‘Ponine brings us, and I suppose we’ll just continue from there.”


	10. A Date at Tuileries

Marius and Cosette strolled through Tuileries garden at a comfortable walking pace, arm in arm and smiling lovingly at each other.  They looked for all the world like a happy couple just out on an evening date.  The fact that they had come this way on many a date in the past, and were well acquainted with Tuileries, made them seem especially at home. 

The first time they had visited the garden together, their hearts had pumped furiously against their chests in adoration.  They did the same tonight, but this time, it was equal parts fear and love.  The garden had an entirely different feel now that there were uniformed soldiers scattered around it.

“There it is,” Marius whispered as they approached the building.  “The Jeu de Paume.  We had our first date here, almost a year ago.”

“I just can’t believe this!” Cosette whispered when she saw how many Nazis stood around the area, looking like they were guarding a shipment of military supplies.  “This place used to be so beautiful.”  Cosette’s voice was quiet, but angry nonetheless.  Marius could feel her hand shaking in his, and he squeezed it tight, partly to reassure her, and partly to reassure himself.

Cosette squeezed back.  Then, as some Nazi guards started to look their way, she leaned in to kiss Marius on the lips.  The guards’ eyes skimmed right past them.

From the shadows of a statue nearby, a teenage girl watched them sadly.  Her little brother perched on the statue’s base, gripping the marble legs to keep himself upright.  The two lovers did not notice these two siblings until they broke away from their kiss.

“Hey there, ‘Ponine,” Marius greeted her as he would a friend.  “What’s new with you?”

“Your friends are all getting ready to party, and I think they want you to join.”  She shot a pointed glance toward a couple on a bench nearby, a man with a cane and a Romani woman who were both trying to look inconspicuous.  When she was satisfied that Marius and Cosette had seen them, she shifted her gaze to another bench a little farther down the path, where a handsome young man with golden curls sat next to a rather dirty art student with paint smears in his tangled black hair, among other places. 

Marius and Cosette took a place on a third bench, near the other two, so that they were close enough to talk and listen, but would not raise suspicion.

“You look like an absolute mess,” Enjolras was scolding Grantaire in a furious undertone.  “You couldn’t at least make an effort to look decent for one day?  For something this important?  You are impossible.”

“The point is not to draw attention to ourselves, right?” the artist retorted back.  “Who is going to want to look twice at me, especially like this?  They’ll just think I am just another broke, drunk artist.  This is Paris.  This is an _art museum_ in Paris.  They won’t give a rat’s ass about me.  You, on the other hand… people notice you.  They stare at you.  They listen to you.  Who is drawing attention to himself now?”

Enjolras sighed.  Did Grantaire never listen?  “The point,” he tried to explain, “is that it’s actually not being used as an art museum right now, and I brought you along so you could—”

Joly coughed from the other bench.  “Um, you are both drawing attention right now,” he pointed out.

Watching diligently from her post at the statue, Éponine gave a silent signal to Gavroche, and he vaulted off from the statue and disappeared.

A Nazi approached their little grouping, which was not as covert as they would have liked it to be.  He glared suspiciously at all six of them sitting there.  When his eyes paused on Musichetta, Joly put his arm protectively around her and glared at the Nazi, warning him to back off.

“What is going on here?” the Nazi growled.  His French was terrible.  Enjolras winced.

“Monsieur, you are interrupting our date night!” Cosette cried, adopting an indignant tone, so as to tell him she was highly offended by his rude manner.

“You’ve upset my girlfriend!” Marius yelled, standing up angrily as if he wanted to duel the man.

“I promise you, monsieur, we were not doing anything offensive.”  Cosette hung on to Marius’ arm as she spoke to the soldier.

The soldier’s gaze shifted suspiciously between the six Amis gathered there.  He looked about to say something else, and for the moment, all of them held their breaths in fearful anticipation of his sentence.

“Oy!  Fascist Bastards!”

The shout interrupted everyone in the park.  The Nazis looked around angrily for the source of the insult.  Civilians looked up from their work, surprised.  Some were scared; others, euphoric.  Les Amis remained still as statues, smiling secretly inside.  From her place in the shadows, Éponine beamed with pride.

“That’s right, you heard me!” the joyful voice called again.  “I’m over here, you murderous pigs!”

In front of the art gallery, Gavroche appeared, dancing and laughing, doing mocking impressions of various German leaders, then skipping out of the way whenever anyone lunged for him.  He kept it up for quite some time, always managing to elude the soldiers who chased him, only to pop back into view a few moments later to taunt them again.  Les Amis noticed that with each dodge, he drew them further and further away from the museum, and from the crowd.

Enjolras stood up then, and nodding meaningfully at Joly, who nodded back.  Then he gestured for Grantaire to walk with him, and headed off in the general direction of the Jeu de Paume.  Marius and Cosette also got up and strolled away, arm in arm.  They headed in the same direction, but appeared as if they did not know the two men they walked next to, as if it was a mere coincidence that they had both come to the same place today.

A few moments later, Joly stood up as well, with the help of his cane and Musichetta, and glanced around until he caught the eye of a bald man who had been wandering listlessly around the walking paths for the past half hour or so, trying not to draw attention to himself.  He smiled at Bossuet and then nodded pointedly toward the building which was not currently a museum.  Bossuet fell in beside Joly and Musichetta as they made their slow way closer to their target.

A few feet away, sitting perched on the edge of one of the garden’s beautiful fountains, Jehan glanced up from his notebook and smiled.  _Oh good,_ he thought.  _It’s time._ Tucking the pen behind his ear, he reached over and plucked a little yellow flower, then let it drift across the water of the fountain like a tiny yellow sailboat.  It drifted over until it hit the opposite wall, attracting the attention of the young man in the fashionable red waistcoat who sat there.  As soon as he noticed this silent message, Bahorel jumped up and whirled around excitedly to see what was going on.  Beaming with joy when he saw Enjolras leading the procession towards the building, and tucking the flower behind his ear, not caring who noticed it, he bounded forward as if the fate of the world depended on his ability to catch up with the resistance leader.

On a bench nearby, a young man in nondescript clothes sat, somewhat hidden behind a newspaper which he did not appear to actually be reading.  As Bahorel passed this bench, he gave a short whistle, causing Feuilly to put the newspaper down and follow him.

Jehan tucked his notebook into a book bag and followed as well.  As he watched Bahorel approach the building, he turned around to face the square full of civilians again, and called out a warning: “You should probably all go home now, it might get a little dangerous here in a minute.”  Then he pivoted and ran to catch up with his friends.

At the end of the street, Les Amis noticed a car pull up and idle near the gallery.  They all recognized Courfeyrac’s parents’ car.  Courfeyrac sat smiling in the driver’s seat, as handsome as ever, and next to him, Combeferre watched the goings-on with rapt attention.  They both made eye contact with Enjolras, who nodded once to let them know that everything was going according to plan.

Slowly, methodically, Les Amis surrounded the Jeu de Paume. 

Most of them took covert places in the shadows by the side of the building, but Enjolras boldly stepped into the light and faced the guard at the door.

“Stop right—” the Nazi began, but that’s as far as he got.  Enjolras punched him so hard that all of Les Amis could hear his nose crack.  When he recoiled, Enjolras knocked his feet out from under him, hit him again, then glanced across to the other side of the doorway, where Bahorel had taken out the other guard in a similar manner.

“Good work, chief,” Bahorel commented, impressed.  “We make great Nazi hunters.”

Enjolras smiled approvingly, then turned to face the rest of his group.  “Alright, _mes amis,_ let’s go!” he called as he gestured for them to advance.  He pushed the doors open, and he and Grantaire led the way into the former art gallery.

The inside of the Jeu de Paume shocked all of them in turn.  Marius remembered, when he had come here on his first date, that it had been a large room with the works of the Impressionists Cosette had so loved on its walls.  Enjolras knew it used to be a tennis court.  It was still a very large room, and still full of art, but its paintings had been taken down and several of them leaned against the walls in various places.  Several were packed into crates as if someone planned on shipping them somewhere.  Quite a few in the back were covered with white drapes to hide them away from the rest.  It was no longer a gallery; it was a warehouse.

Les Amis wandered among the rows and rows of paintings and sculptures, staring at each one, all wondering the same thing: _what is it all doing here?_

“ _Mon dieu,_ ” Grantaire whispered, stopping to stare at a collection of paintings which were leaning up against the walls and crates in no particular order.  He moved some others out of the way to better admire the collection he had found.  “Do you realize what this is?”

“It’s a Monet!” Cosette exclaimed, staring at it in wonder.  She had seen these paintings on display here before, and she remembered the famous artist’s name.

“It’s not just a Monet!  This is Water Lilies!  His most famous piece!  But they’ve got it all wrong, it needs to be on display around the room.  These pieces are out of order, and just haphazardly lying about, you can’t get the whole impact…”

Grantaire began to wax poetic about Monet’s Water Lilies, explaining the history, artistic process, and importance of the piece, and some Amis stopped their search of the place to listen to him.

“That’s remarkable,” Jehan commented, impressed.  “You really should work in an art gallery.  You clearly have a lot of knowledge about this.”

A crash near the front of the room drew everyone’s attention – Bossuet had tripped over a crate, which sent rolled up paintings and a few letters scattering across the floor.  As he picked himself up, apologizing to them all for the distraction, Bahorel picked up one of the letters.  When he saw the German Reich’s seal on the outside of it, he tore it open angrily, declaring “let’s see what those bastards have to say for themselves.”

“What do they have to say?” Joly asked, as he and Musichetta helped pick Bossuet up off the floor.

Bahorel sighed.  “I don’t know.  I can’t read German.”

“Let me see it,” Marius asked, reaching for the letter.  His eyes scanned it slowly, and he frowned a few times, his brow knit in concentration, but then he nodded as if he’d figured out a difficult puzzle.  “Okay, it says that these paintings are going to be taken to Germany, except the ones in the back, which are labeled… I think this word means something like ‘degraded,’ or maybe it’s ‘degenerate?’  That makes no sense, though, how can art be degenerate… but anyway, those ones are supposed to be burned.”

Grantaire had joined them, and was sorting through some of the spilled artworks.  “Really?  Wow.  They really don’t like those, do they?” he remarked.  Then, holding up a magnificent work of Cubist modern art, he cried, “You guys, this is an original Picasso!”

“There’s no way we’re letting them have that,” Bahorel insisted.  “Picasso is a comrade, he would hate for Hitler to have his work.”

“Wait a minute,” Enjolras interrupted.  “Pontmercy, since when do you speak German?”

Marius shrugged, blushing bright red under all the attention.  “I learned it a couple of months ago,” he mumbled.

“And you never bothered to tell us?” Enjolras asked.

“I… didn’t think it was relevant?”

“Marius, we’re being occupied by Germans.  We’re fighting a war against them.  If you can read their confidential correspondences, that is very important information for me to know.”

While Marius blushed surrounded by everybody, Feuilly gravitated toward the back of the warehouse, slowly, as if dazed.  They were going to burn the art hidden back here, the letter had said.  They must really hate it, Grantaire had said.  Feuilly thought he knew what he would find.  Still dazed, he took the corner of a white sheet in his hand and pulled it away, revealing the piles of so-called “degenerate” art.  Some of it he recognized – it had once decorated the house of his rabbi, the rabbi’s family, some others he knew.  He stared at it, looking at each work in turn, and found that he actually knew quite a few of them.  He shuddered.

Quietly, Enjolras drifted over and stood beside him.  He looked at the same artwork, but did not see the same thing.  Still, he wanted more than anything to support his friend, and he could tell this art clearly meant something.

“What is this?” he asked gently, keeping his voice low.

“They stole this.”  Feuilly’s voice sounded strained, like he was holding back a flood of emotion.  “These paintings belong to us.  Some of them were even painted by us.  These should be hanging in the homes of their owners, but they’re here, hidden under a sheet.  Hidden away until the Nazis decide to burn them, of course.  They destroy everything that is ours.”  Suddenly, he turned to face Enjolras, and his anguish showed through in his eyes.  “What do you think happened to those people, Enjolras?”

Enjolras gave his friend a sympathetic look.  “I’m so sorry, _mon ami_ ,” he whispered, and he genuinely felt it.  Feuilly’s agony was his agony as well.  Then, trying to think of something hopeful to say, he added, “we will fight for them.  When we liberate France, we will liberate them too.”

“They’re probably already dead,” Feuilly reminded him.

“Then we shall liberate it in their memory.”

Feuilly nodded, and Enjolras put a hand on his shoulder comfortingly, as if to say “it will be okay.”

At that moment, Combeferre slipped in the door at the front of the gallery, and paused as he stood at the front of the place.  His eyes widened as he took it all in.  His mouth had been open, ready to say something, but no words came out.  Eventually, he stammered, “E-Enjolras?”

“I’m here, ‘Ferre.”

Combeferre looked, and saw him standing next to Feuilly and the “degenerate art.”

“Um, Courfeyrac and I have two cars ready,” he announced.  “We dropped Gavroche off at the café, and I thought we might need a second car, so I asked my parents…”  He trailed off.  He was still staring at the vast expanse of art.

“There’s no way in Hell we’re taking all of this,” Grantaire said, expressing the realization that all of them had come to.  No matter how much they managed to carry, they would have to leave some of it there.

“What should we do, Enj?” Combeferre asked.  “Those guards failed to catch Gavroche, so they’re probably headed back here soon.”

Enjolras glanced at the friend beside him again.  “Well, Feuilly?  What do you say?”

Feuilly paused, confused.  “What?”

“What should we do with it?”

Feuilly paused as he glanced at the stolen artwork again, trying to regain control of his emotions.  Anguish and honor are strange when they are both felt at the same time.  Finally, he lifted his head high and turned back to face the group.

“We save as much of this as we can.”

That was all they needed.  At once, each one seized a painting or sculpture and carried it outside.  Combeferre led the way to the cars, and he and Courfeyrac began helping their friends pile as much art into them as possible.

They all realized the same thing at once.

“These cars won’t be able to carry us and the art both,” Courfeyrac whispered gravely.  “We’ll have to choose…”

“We can run,” Feuilly stated.  “You two take the art and go.”  He looked around at his friends to make sure this was okay with them, and they all nodded.  It would be dangerous, but it was necessary.  They all wanted to take this risk.

They dashed back and forth between the two cars and the museum several times, packing painting after painting on top of each other in the backseats, passenger seats, and trunks of both vehicles.  As Combeferre had predicted, the Nazis arrived as they were loading the cars.  He gave a signal to Courfeyrac, whose car was already full of artwork, and Courfeyrac drove off as fast as he could.  As they suspected, some of the Nazis climbed into their own cars and followed close behind, but several more remained behind at the gallery, shouting angrily in German and broken French, trying to control the scene.

“Alright, we know you are in this building.  Show yourselves!” a corporal ordered in a voice that sounded like it was made for giving orders.  Heart pounding against her chest in pure fear, Cosette moved to emerge from behind Monet’s Water Lilies, but Marius gripped her arm tightly and shook his head.  Then he stepped out in her place.

“This isn’t what it looks like!” he cried in German, desperately hoping he had the right grammar and pronunciation, since he really didn’t speak the language that well.  Slowly, he walked forward with hands raised to show he meant no harm, his eyes locked on the corporal.

Silently, behind the Water Lilies, Musichetta gripped Cosette’s hand and pointed to the doorway.  The way was open.  All the Nazis were staring at Marius instead of searching the building or guarding the door.  They had not been expecting to hear their own language spoken, especially not by someone who was not wearing the uniform of a soldier.

“But Marius,” Cosette mouthed, eyes wide, but Musichetta shook her head and pointed to the door again, more urgently this time.

Cosette looked around, grabbed a small replica of an ancient Greek statue, and then glanced back at Musichetta and nodded.  Carefully, the two women snuck around behind the German troops and out the door. 

Combeferre met them outside and packed the statue and a painting that Musichetta held into his car, then gestured for them to leave.

“But your car is not full!” Cosette cried.  “We could still help!”

“You two need to get out of here fast,” he protested.  “Feuilly, you too.  And where is Jehan?”

Feuilly shook his head quickly.  “I’m not leaving, I am staying to help liberate this place,” he insisted. 

“Feuilly, go!”

Then, exploding out of the museum door came Enjolras and Grantaire, carrying a large painting between the two of them.  Jehan slipped out behind them carrying a small painting which had been on the walls of his own apartment back in June.  Behind Jehan in the doorway, Combeferre could glimpse Bahorel in the midst of a full-on brawl with four of the soldiers.

“This has to be the last one,” Enjolras commanded as he and Grantaire reached the car.  “Everyone scatter, I’m going back for Pontmercy and Bahorel, and we’ll be right behind you!”

“We’re not going to fight them?” Feuilly asked.  He looked surprised.

“We are not equipped to fight them today, unfortunately,” Enjolras admitted.  From the look on his face, it was evident that he was not at all happy about this either, but he knew he had to make the decision that would be best for the group.

“We _are_ fighting them by taking this artwork back,” Combeferre pointed out. 

While they stood there, others of their friends escaped from the Jeu de Paume as well, and scattered in varying directions to throw the Nazis off their track.  Jehan slipped into a small alleyway which he hoped would work in his favor – his skinny form would be able to twist to work around the tight curves and low-hanging window shutters, and he knew that these same features which helped him would only hinder those who chased him.  He wouldn’t be able to run at top speed in an alley such as that, but he wouldn’t need to… and that meant he wouldn’t tire out as fast either.

When Combeferre drove away with the second load of art, Cosette and Musichetta skipped off a different way.  At first, Cosette kept glancing over her shoulder, watching for a sign that Marius was following her.  She needed to know he was okay.  But then, one of the Nazis shot at them, and the bullet narrowly missed Musichetta, who dodged out of the way just in time.  Cosette glanced at the man for half a second, then gripped ‘Chetta’s trembling hand and whispered, “follow me.”

Together, the two women sprinted along the sides of the street, sometimes running in the gutters to get around the people on the sidewalks.  With Cosette leading, they kept to the shadows, and frequently slipped through alleyways similar to the one Jehan had disappeared into, always in an effort to lose the men who followed them.  Cosette had learned very well from her father, who seemed to have a lot of experience evading the police.

Meanwhile, back inside the gallery, sweat dripped down Marius’ bright red face as he frantically searched for the right words to say that would not mean certain death for him and his friends.

“Honestly, we’re not… we’re not, uh… how is the weather in Berlin lately?” he stammered, as he slowly backed away.  He accidentally backed into a Greek statue, and gasped audibly.

Enjolras pushed his way through the brawl at the door – which Bahorel appeared to be winning somehow – punched the Nazi that Marius had been trying to talk to, then grabbed Marius by the hand.  His face looked more serious than Marius had ever seen it.

“Come on, Pontmercy, we’re leaving.”

Marius did not have to be told twice.  He and Enjolras walked out of the Jeu de Paume as if they fully expected it to explode behind them.  As they passed, Enjolras seized Bahorel as well and pulled him along with them.  As soon as they got through the door, they took off running as fast as they could, trying to put as much space as possible between themselves and the remaining guards.

Feuilly, Grantaire, Joly, and Bossuet stood in the middle of the grassy plain in front of Tuileries, surrounded by several of those guards.  Their faces showed pure terror.  When he noticed this, Enjolras’ eyes flashed with pure rage, and Bahorel and Marius could hear him mutter “oh _Hell_ no.”  Then he charged the group of Nazis head-on.

Seizing two of them by the collar at once, he shoved them backwards away from his friends with what looked like enough force to possibly break a hole in the wall of the Bastille.  Behind him, Bahorel barreled into another section of the circle, forcing them away from Grantaire with a furious war cry.  Marius joined in the fray as well, shoving one of the soldiers backwards with all his might.

“Let’s GO!” Enjolras cried, his voice loud and commanding enough to carry across the entire garden.  Seizing Feuilly’s hand, he and the fan maker led the way down the streets of Paris, Grantaire and Marius right on their tail, Bahorel still punching a few Nazis on the sidelines, and Joly and Bossuet bringing up the rear.

The gunshot stopped them in their tracks, and Enjolras and Feuilly turned to see Joly and Bossuet on the ground, Joly’s cane lying a few feet away, and their friend’s blood staining the pavement red.


	11. Aftershock

With the echo of the gunshot still ringing in his ears, Enjolras ran over to where Joly and Bossuet had fallen.  Time seemed to slow down.  He couldn’t think.  In his peripheral vision, he could see his friends shouting something, but he couldn’t hear them.  All he could hear was the blood from his own heartbeat pounding in his head, and all he could think was a prayer: _Please don’t let them be dead._

Joly lay sprawled very awkwardly on the pavement, an expression of terror on his face.  His arms desperately clutched Bossuet, who lay on top of him facing the sky.  Blood leaked slowly from Bossuet's leg and dripped onto the street.

“Get up, Bossuet.  Get up!”  Joly was shouting.  He shifted his embrace until he could feel a pulse, then exclaimed, “Aha!  So, you _are_ alive!  Get up!”

Enjolras skidded to a halt beside his friends and offered Bossuet his hand.  He took it, and Enjolras pulled him to his feet.  As he stood up, Bossuet let out a scream of agony and ended up standing on one leg, hugging Enjolras with all his might.  His breathing came in short, quick gasps, and he shook.

“Joly?” he cried as he glanced behind him, his eyes drawn to the ground where his boyfriend lay.

Joly had found his cane again and was pulling himself to his feet, albeit shakily.  Looking at Enjolras, he explained, “I’ll be okay, I wasn’t physically hurt, but he’s been shot in the l— look out!”

Before Enjolras could turn to see what Joly was talking about, a flash of green shot past him almost in a blur.  “Don’t hurt him!” Grantaire’s voice called out, and they heard the sound of a very well-landed punch as he began boxing with the soldiers.

Bahorel appeared by Enjolras’ side at that moment and gently took Bossuet from him, scooping Bossuet up like you would a child.  “Chief, if you can keep these guys busy for just a few minutes, I can take care of the rest,” he told Enjolras in an undertone.  Then, muttering something about a safehouse, he nodded for Joly to follow him.

Enjolras nodded, then turned to face Grantaire.  Marius and Feuilly had also thrown themselves into the fray.  Enjolras joined as well, coming up behind the soldier that Feuilly was fighting and holding him in a headlock so that his friend could more easily attack.  Silently, he watched Bahorel, Bossuet, and Joly over the Nazi’s shoulder, and when they had disappeared from his view, he cut the fight short.

“We need to leave before even more of them show up,” he advised, but he might as well have ordered it.  They all obeyed.  Together, the four remaining Amis ran off across Paris, making random turns until they knew they were no longer being followed, and eventually made their way back to the sanctuary they knew and loved so well.

~ 

“You did _what_ to the Nazis?!”  Jehan stared at his friend in shock and awe.  It sounded to him like a scene from a movie, not like something that had actually happened that afternoon in the streets of Paris. 

“I was boxing with them,” Grantaire repeated.  “But, you know, without boxing gloves.”  He held up his hands for Jehan to see.  Combeferre had bandaged them almost as soon as he had seen the state they’d been in.

Jehan continued to stare.  “Why?” he asked, barely believing it.

Grantaire shrugged.  “They were going to kill Enjolras,” he admitted.

Jehan’s eyes lit up with recognition as he looked at Grantaire with a new understanding.  All of the confusion had gone, and now he understood perfectly what caused his friend to endanger life and limb for the leader in red.  _“L’amour,”_ he whispered, smiling.

“What?  No, don’t be ridiculous, I’m not _… love_ , seriously?”

The poet nodded, still smiling bright enough to light up a room.  “Don’t try to hide it, _mon ami_ , I know what love looks like.  You love our fearless leader, admit it!”

Grantaire sighed.  He tried to think about other things, other people he knew, but the face of that golden-haired Achilles and red flags kept taking over his mind.  If he thought about any of the other Amis, it inevitably led back to Enjolras, so he tried something else.  He pictured a plain wooden table with a bottle of wine on it.  Red wine.  Good French wine.  French and red.  He had once gotten a bottle like this from... _Put the bottle down_. 

“Okay, yeah.  I love Enjolras.”

Jehan began clapping a little, but then immediately changed his entire demeanor and put one foot on a chair dramatically, as if about to recite something.  “Ode to Enjolras, from Grantaire.  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

“Oh my God, Jehan…”

“Thou art more lovely and more temperate.  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date—”

“Jehan!”

“Sometimes too hot the eye of Heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed – ooh, ‘his gold complexion,’ that’s even accurate!  Wow, Grantaire, you’re in love with the Fair Youth from Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

“That _is_ accurate, because whoever the Fair Youth was is dead now, and Enjolras is probably going to be soon,” Grantaire commented, disgruntled.

Jehan looked at his friend closely and, seeing that he didn’t need someone to recite Shakespeare with at that moment, climbed down from the chair.  Instead, he knelt on the floor next to Grantaire and put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.  “Tell me what happened.”

Grantaire sighed again, stayed silent for a moment, and then let everything come spilling out.

“He’s just so reckless, you know?  Like, how many times per week does he get himself into a life or death situation with the Nazis?  Have you counted?  I was trying to, but I lost count – and I swear it wasn’t just because I was drinking.  And the thing is, I can’t tell if he knows the danger he’s going into beforehand or if this kind of stuff just happens to him accidentally, but if it does, he’s got some of the worst luck in the world, and that’s including Bossuet.  But if he knows how dangerous it is, and he does it anyway… _why?_    What is the point of that?  He’s going to get himself killed or worse one of these days, and… and I just don’t know if I could handle that.  I couldn’t handle living in a world without him.”  His voice broke, but he continued anyway.  “And I mean, I tried to tell him what it would be like.  You were there, and you know my father fought the Germans right?  So I know this.  I know what they do to people.  The First World War was Hell, because my father was there and it changed him so much.  It’s like he hates me, but I don’t know why.  Because I understand what love is?  Because he doesn’t think there is such a thing?  And you know what gets to me the most?  This war is worse.  The Germans are worse this time, somehow, and everything is generally darker, but Enjolras just keeps fighting them.  No matter what.  And that’s why he is going to die, and that is why I drink so damn much.”

Jehan sat in silence as Grantaire spoke, listening intently to every word, and nodding when appropriate.  When he saw that his friend seemed to have reached the end of his rant, he spoke up softly.

“Well,” he said, “I think Enjolras keeps fighting because he believes in it.”

“The war?”

“Freedom.  And he’s willing to go to frankly remarkable places to get it back.  It’s sort of like those ancient heroes we liked reading about before all this started, remember?  The Greek epics.”

Grantaire nodded.  “Yeah.  But they all die, too.  And I’m a nobody in this, so that means I get to watch as he dies for some cause he probably thinks is glorious, and no one will give a damn about my part in it.”

Jehan shook his head, a frown furrowing his brow.  “No, no, my friend!” he protested.  “You are important.  Like you said, you saved his life today.  Enjolras is lucky to have you.  Perhaps you will save his life again before this is all over.”

Grantaire shrugged, sighing dejectedly.  “Maybe then I’ll die too.”

~

Combeferre emerged from their little infirmary in the Café Musain, wiping his hands dry with a cloth and looking exhausted.  Enjolras jumped up immediately and searched his friend’s face for some kind of sign that might tell him if the news was bad or good.

“He’s stable,” Combeferre reported, the exhaustion showing through in his voice.  “Joly is with him now.  He should pull through.”

Enjolras gave a sigh of relief, but Combeferre still looked concerned.

“Are _you_ okay?” he asked.  “You’ve been through a lot in the past few months.”

“Not as much as Bossuet or Feuilly or Jehan,” Enjolras muttered.

“I didn’t say ‘the most,’ I said ‘a lot.’  Enjolras, you almost got beaten to death on the very first day of occupation, you risk your life every day sheltering Feuilly in your apartment, and today you saw one of your best friends get shot.  _Are you okay?”_

Enjolras glanced away as he thought about everything that had happened.  Every image that filled his mind was wrought with blood – red seemed to be the dominant color.  Gunshots going off and blood spilling… this seemed to be his life now.  _But I have to do it this way,_ he reminded himself.  _We have no other choice.  It’s a violent resistance.  It’s a war._

He remembered how he had wanted to join the army to fight the Germans that way.  That seemed like years ago.  But even though he had not enlisted, Les Amis and the others in the Resistance were basically their own army, weren’t they?  And they needed a leader who could stay strong for them.

“Don’t worry about me, ‘Ferre,” he muttered.

“Enjolras…”

“Don’t,” he repeated, looking his friend in the eye.  “I’ll be okay, I can manage.  Worry about France.”

Combeferre sighed and shook his head as he watched his friend.  That was classic Enjolras, but it worried the crap out of him.

“This war is unlike anything we’ve ever done,” he tried to explain.  “You have to understand—”

“Yes, which is why we need to be prepared for the next attack at any time,” Enjolras interrupted, trying to change the subject.  Then he got up and headed for the door.

He was just about to open it when it opened, and Cosette stood there.  Apologizing politely to him, she stepped around him and walked up to Combeferre in a way that said she had something specific on her mind.

“Are you busy?” she asked the medical student.  “I was wondering, if you had time, could you teach me how to make bandages?  If our friends are injured again, I should hope to be of some help next time.”

Combeferre glanced at Enjolras pointedly.  His look said “we are not done talking.”

“I have to go prepare our next battle plan,” Enjolras explained curtly as he left the room.  “He’s all yours, Cosette.”

_Combeferre is right, of course,_ he thought as he walked.  _This war is something else entirely.  We’ve never done this before._   But that’s why he was constantly coming up with new strategies.

_I have this under control,_ he tried to convince himself.  _None of our friends have died yet.  We’re doing alright._

Suddenly, he remembered Bahorel’s actions during the art raid.  Bahorel had been able to think on his feet, and his courage probably saved Bossuet’s life, as well as several others.  And he had good experience with resistance movements like theirs, too.  Quickly, Enjolras poked his head into the back room where many of Les Amis sat around discussing things.

“Bahorel?” he asked.  “Can I talk to you for a minute?  We need to discuss guerrilla tactics.”

The two warriors retreated into a private room and remained there for several hours, energetically discussing what needed to be done.  They may be outgunned and outmanned, they knew, but under this leadership, with all their skills combined, they were confident they could build the most well organized, effective resistance movement France had ever seen.


	12. Those Who Work at Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some implied past Jehanparnasse at the beginning here. Also... I am sorry about the hurt that happens in the rest of the chapter.

The janitor from the journalism school kept his word, and let Jehan come back several times over the next few months to print more fliers.  It became a regular thing, and the fliers printed in the dead of night on the journalism school’s antique printing press became a common sight on Parisian walls.  Jehan wrote messages of hope and short little news bulletins about the recent Resistance actions, framed by illustrations of anonymous resistance fighters kicking Nazi ass.  Sometimes he also included a few lines of poetry against the occupying army, poetry that made the French remember what their country was supposed to be like.  When the darkness hid them from view, Jehan and Courfeyrac snuck out and pasted these posters all over Paris.

On one particular night in the fall of 1941, the two of them darted from shadow to shadow near the cathedral of Notre Dame.  They had finished putting up all of their posters, but they had the sneaking suspicion that someone had seen them.  Since they were also out past curfew, that meant that if they got caught, they would be in trouble the likes of which they had never been in before.

“Stop right there!” an angry voice cried out as they crossed the street near Notre Dame.  Both Amis cursed quietly under their breath as they ran across the pavement away from the angry voice.  Jehan pointed to a side street, and they both slipped into it, hoping to lose their pursuer in the darkness.

“Whoa, hey there,” a voice said from somewhere very close to them.  “This is my hiding hole.  Get your own.”

“If we’re all hiding from the same people, why can’t we just… oh.  Hey Montparnasse.”

Montparnasse squinted at his new hiding-place-companions.  “Jehan,” he said when he recognized the Ami.  “Hello again.  Who is this?  Your new boyfriend?”

“Shh!  Not so loud,” Jehan hissed.  “And no, he’s not.”

“Whatever.  I won’t judge.  So, what are you two up to tonight?” the smiling dandy asked.  “Murder most foul?”

“Ugh, no!” Courfeyrac cried, offended by the suggestion.  ‘Parnasse frowned at that reaction.  Then, he noticed the glue and the brushes that Jehan still held, and his eyes lit up with sudden understanding.

“You’re the ones who’ve been putting up those prop posters and such.  The Resistance propaganda, right?  The ones with the bad poetry and patriotic bullshit on ‘em?”

Jehan looked offended then.  He was about to say something scathing to Montparnasse, but Courfeyrac wrapped an arm around his shoulders and steered him away.  “Come on, _mon ami_ ,” he said, “we can find a better hiding spot that doesn’t include this creep.”

“Fine,” Montparnasse muttered as they walked away.  “Just go on without me.  Never mind that I know the best ways to get rid of the cop that’s after you.”

Courfeyrac and Jehan crept their way around the cathedral and found a spot where they could crouch in the shadows on the other side of it.  When they had finally found their temporary resting place, Courfeyrac turned to his friend with an eyebrow raised.

“I don’t mean to pry, but… did you date that guy at one point?” he asked.  “Because it really seems like you probably did.”

Jehan gasped.  “You promised you would never judge me for that!” he cried.

“I’m not judging your sexuality,” Courfeyrac promised.  “I am kind of judging your taste in men, though.”

Jehan rolled his eyes, although in the darkness, Courfeyrac couldn’t see that.  Then they sat there behind the intricate gothic columns of Notre Dame, listening to the sounds of Paris at night and waiting for proof that the coast was clear. 

~

Enjolras tried to watch his surroundings, but truth be told, his mind was still stuck on the meeting he had just left.  The leaders of all the resistance groups in Paris had been there, and even some of the provincial groups had managed to send representatives into town for it.  They all whispered about the same bit of secret resistance news.  It was rumored that Jean Moulin, a former socialist prefect from one of France’s provisional departments, had made it to London, and had met Charles de Gaulle.  One of the provincial leaders who had managed to make it into Paris that night insisted that Moulin would travel back into France and help liberate it from the Nazi occupiers.  After all, Moulin was a proud Frenchman, one who had already proven that he hated fascists, and he had also already endured torture at the hands of the Nazis.  Besides, there were rumors that De Gaulle had asked him to come back and unify his home country.  Enjolras desperately wished that he could meet such an inspiring Resistance hero someday, but for the moment, he knew he had to focus on the fight at hand.

The message was one of unity.  Moulin and De Gaulle preached that the many resistance cells across France should unify and forge one over-arching national Resistance, and the leaders at that night’s meeting had discussed how such a feat might be achieved.  As he made his way back across Paris, Enjolras imagined the glories of such a thing, if it could possibly exist: an inter-connected Resistance where news from the West coast could reach fighters in Alsace in no time, a Resistance where the people of Paris and the people of Marseille could fight side by side despite being in different parts of the country.  He longed for it, and he longed to be an integral part of it.  Those feelings of elation and hope followed him long after he left the meeting place.

Suddenly, his boot hit a puddle and made a loud splashing noise, which pulled him back to the present.  He had not been paying enough attention to where he was walking, or to who might be watching.  From around a corner, he heard a policeman’s voice shout “Who’s there?” and he instinctively felt at his belt for a weapon.  Finding nothing reliable, he bolted just as the policeman rounded the corner.  It was a French cop, not an occupying soldier or the gestapo, but Enjolras knew he needed to hide just the same.

“Is that you, Valjean?” Inspector Javert called out.  “I know it’s you.  You can’t hide from me forever.”

Enjolras held his breath and stayed stock still behind the statue he had leapt behind for shelter.  He didn’t know why this police officer seemed to think he was a person named Valjean, but at the moment, he didn’t care.  He just didn’t want to get arrested tonight.

Javert turned another corner, still calling after Valjean, and Enjolras let his breath relax a little.  Slowly, he crept out from his hiding place and began to turn into a nearby alleyway, a shortcut that he knew would take him closer to the Place Saint Michel and his home.

He didn’t take more than one step into the alleyway.  Right there in the middle of the path lay a dead body, recently killed by the look of it, with blood leaking slowly out across the paving stones.  It wore the uniform of a member of the gestapo.  Enjolras stared at it for a moment before coming up with an idea.

“Oh my God, murder!” he cried, loudly, his voice carrying as far as he could make it.  “Someone’s been murdered over here!  Police!  Come quickly!”  Then, as the sound of Javert’s running footsteps grew louder, Enjolras ran in the opposite direction, away from the scene of the crime and the cop who could arrest him for a variety of reasons.

He was just looking over his shoulder to make sure Javert wasn’t following him when he heard a quick gasp from in front of him and he almost ran straight into Courfeyrac and Jehan.  They both looked very startled, and all three of them knew they needed to get out of the streets as fast as they could.

“Did ‘Parnasse kill somebody?” Jehan asked.  He had heard Enjolras’ cry of murder and jumped to very easy conclusions.

“What?” Enjolras asked.  “No, never mind.  We need to get out of here.  Let’s go that way.”  Then, pointing to a path that was not the way either of them had come from, he led the way, and Courfeyrac and Jehan both followed immediately.

It wasn’t long before another angry voice echoed from behind them.  This one, however, spoke with the telltale accent that told them it was definitely not Javert.  Courfeyrac glanced over his shoulder and saw an SS operative standing there in the middle of the street, glaring at the three of them as if he thought they were the worst scum in the world.  Personally, Courfeyrac could have said the same of the SS.

“Are you the ones who shot Mueller?” he demanded.

“Uh… no,” Courfeyrac replied.  “Nope, we did not do that.”  He assumed – correctly – that Mueller was the body that everyone was yelling about right now.

“You are lying, I think,” the SS man said.  Then he began advancing down the street towards them.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Jehan whispered to his friends.  “Run.”

“Good idea, I vote yes,” Courfeyrac said before turning and bolting down the street like the demons of Hell itself were after him.  Jehan and Enjolras bolted after him, and for a while, they gave the Nazi a good chase through the maze of the Parisian backstreets.  If they hadn’t been so terrified, it might even have been fun.  Jehan and Courfeyrac taunted their pursuer a few times as they narrowly evaded him, and Enjolras threw things like paving stones or flower pots at him as they ran. 

Then, suddenly, it became a lot less fun and a lot more terrifying as the Nazi pulled out a pistol and began firing at them.  His first blast hit the side of a house, leaving a sizeable bullet hole in the wall just below their window.  Les Amis couldn’t tell where his second blast hit.

“ _Mon ami?!”_ Enjolras cried out fearfully, looking sideways at Jehan.

“Missed me!” Jehan called, partly to taunt the soldier and partly to reassure his friends.  Not looking back, the three of them continued to run.

Enjolras stumbled for a moment, then kept running.  Courfeyrac quickly pulled Jehan into an alleyway, and he followed them, eager to get back to base.  They were not equipped for a fight of this magnitude tonight.  He heard Combeferre’s voice in his head: “you don’t have to battle every Nazi in Paris one-on-one.”

Courfeyrac and Jehan took off down the narrow alley, but Enjolras slowed to a stop, bent over in pain.  He felt the pain growing in his side, like something was on fire.  He was sure that feeling had not been there before.

Courfeyrac noticed, and doubled back.  “Enj, what are you doing?  Come on!” he cried, gesturing down the alleyway toward their supposed freedom.

“I just need to… catch my breath….” Enjolras tried to explain.  The pain stabbed at his internal organs like a knife, and he pressed his hand over his side in an attempt to get it to stop.  He leaned up against the nearest wall so that he would not fall over. 

Jehan walked over to him, peering at him through the evening light.  He knew well what catching your breath after a long run looked like, and it definitely did _not_ look like a face knit with pain and a white-knuckled hand… make that a hand with red liquid oozing between its fingers.

“Um, Enjolras…” he said hesitantly.

“Please don’t look,” Enjolras whispered.  Then, he glanced down, carefully taking his hand away.  As soon as he saw the blood leaking from his wound, he clapped his hand back over it as if he could hold it all in.

 _I’ve been shot,_ he realized.  _So, this is what getting shot feels like._

“Oh my God,” Courfeyrac exclaimed when he saw it.  “Oh, my God…”

“Are you okay to walk?” Jehan asked.  Enjolras gave a pained nod, then made himself stand without the wall’s support.  He kept his left hand clasped firmly over his side, and he took Jehan’s hand with the right.

“I can do it,” he said, trying hard to keep a strong façade for his friends.  “Lead the way.”

They made their way out of the alley and through a few more streets.  They moved slower than they would like to, with Enjolras’ wound, but none of them pulled ahead of the group.  They all stuck together, and all three of them moved as a unit.  Courfeyrac led, Jehan kept an eye out for other Nazis who might take issue with them being out past curfew, and Enjolras just focused all his energy on taking one step, then the next.  He trusted Courfeyrac to lead them home.

By the time they reached the Place de la Concorde, Enjolras had become very aware of the fact that he was leaving a blood trail.  Small drops, hardly visible in the quickly falling darkness, but still, he knew they would be visible by daylight.  He made them stop so that he could use his tie as a makeshift bandage, and bandage the wound so that he would not lead the Nazis straight to their hideout. 

His hands slipped several times tying it, and Courfeyrac knelt next to him in the shadow of the fountain in the Place de la Concorde.  Jehan took a post on the other side of the fountain to watch for approaching guards.

“At least it’s getting a lot darker now, so they should have a harder time seeing us,” Courfeyrac whispered to his friend as he helped him tie the tie. 

Enjolras clasped his friend’s hand tightly and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. 

“It is taking all my strength just to stay upright,” he admitted, albeit reluctantly.  “I don’t think I can walk all the way to the Musain.”

“Okay,” Courfeyrac replied, thinking on his feet, “then we’ll go to your place instead.” But Enjolras shook his head.

“Still too far,” he grunted, wincing.  “I… I can barely stand upright, Courf.”

Courfeyrac was silent for a minute.  He glanced around the square, trying to get a handle on the situation.  Then he looked at his friend with a new resolve, an idea in his head.  “I know a place nearby,” he explained.  “An old friend of mine lives there who can help us.  We’ll go there.”  And with that, he pulled Enjolras to his feet and led the way.

By the time they turned onto the Rue Saint Honoré, it took both Courfeyrac and Jehan to hold Enjolras upright.  The entire right side of his body felt like it was on fire, and with every step, he wanted to double down and clutch his chest.  Courfeyrac and Jehan made sure he kept walking until they got to the right address, then Jehan held his hand as the two of them pressed themselves up against the wall in the shadows of the building while Courfeyrac knocked urgently on the door.

A young woman in a nightgown and curlers answered the door with a confused and concerned expression on her face.  When she saw Courfeyrac, her eyes showed immediate recognition.

“Jean-Jacques, you are probably the last person I expected…”

Courfeyrac made a quiet shushing sound when she said his name.  “Listen,” he whispered, barely audible, “I know this is out of nowhere, and I apologize for the lateness of the hour, but a friend and I need a place to… uh, lie low for a while.  Just one night.”  The expression on his face was somehow both apologetic and charming.

The girl sighed.  “Where is your friend?”

Enjolras leaned forward slightly, just enough to let her know someone was there, and nodded his greeting.  Her eyes widened, and she glanced back at Courfeyrac.  A terrifying moment passed where they weren’t sure she would let them in.  Then, she ushered them inside and closed the door quickly behind them.

“Jean-Jacques, I swear,” she began, but then noticed the blood which had already soaked through Enjolras’ tie.  She exclaimed “oh my goodness!” then immediately launched into a flurry of action, running back and forth to the kitchen and the bathroom and retrieving numerous things she thought he might need.

“Jehan, go find one of our allied doctors,” Courfeyrac instructed in the midst of this flurry.  Jehan nodded and slipped back out the door as silently as he had entered it, only turning around to note the house number before running off into the night.

“Mademoiselle,” Enjolras mumbled when she re-entered the room next.  He leaned up against a door frame to support himself, his hand still firmly pressed against his bleeding side.  “Your name?”

“Irma,” she replied.  “Please sit down.”

“Mademoiselle Irma, I’m afraid I dripped some blood on your carpet…”

She smiled sympathetically at him.  “It’s alright,” she whispered.  “I know how to wash it out.  The couch is right there, sit, you’re very hurt.”  Then she gestured into her living room before running back into the bathroom for more supplies.

~

Jehan burst into the Musain like a lightning bolt and stumbled to a stop in the middle of the café.  He took a few moments to catch his breath, then stood up straight and glanced around.  Thankfully, there were no patrons, just Madame Hucheloup wiping down the bar.

“Madame H!” he cried.  “Are any of my friends in the back room?”

“Who knows?” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up.  “I can’t keep track of you boys.  Especially not when you keep running about at this hour of the night, going to get yourselves killed, I swear, just watch,” she added, mumbling under her breath.

Jehan didn’t listen to anything beyond her first two words, as he was already through the door to the back room. 

“Combeferre!” he called urgently, making his voice as loud as possible.  “Joly!  A doctor!  Anybody!”

Combeferre emerged from the makeshift infirmary with a worried expression.  “What’s wrong?  Jehan, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but Enjolras has been shot—”

Combeferre’s expression hardened.  He looked more serious than Jehan had ever seen him.  Inside his head, a million questions ran rampant, but he didn’t ask any of them.  Those were questions for later.  In that moment, he only uttered one, which was a demand.

“Where is he.”

“398 Rue Saint Honoré.”

Combeferre seized his medical bag and ran without another word, leaving Jehan to follow behind.  He didn’t care what else happened tonight – he was going to save Enjolras’ life.

~

Enjolras sat down on Irma’s couch, relieved to not be standing anymore.  He took off his jacket, and stared for a while at the size of the red stain on his shirt.  It seemed like a lot of blood to him.  Too much.  He felt a sickening feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with his wound.

He didn’t want to die yet.  It wasn’t time.  The Resistance was only starting to get truly organized, after all, and dying for a cause wasn’t supposed to happen at the beginning of a fight.  Besides, the reasons why he’d been shot seemed all wrong.  If he died here, he would be nothing more than yet another victim of the brutality of the SS, and France wouldn’t be any freer than she had been before.

He was so distracted by the growing redness on his shirt that he almost didn’t notice Courfeyrac and Irma moving everything off of her living room table, clearing a space.  Then, Courfeyrac knelt on the floor next to the couch, so that they could talk easier.

“Hey, Enj,” he began.  “How’re you doing?”

“Not my best hour,” Enjolras muttered.

“Yeah, well hang in there, okay?” Courfeyrac pleaded.  “We have a doctor on the way, so you’re going to be just fine.”

“I was shot.”

“I know.”

“I’ve never been shot before.”

“I know that, too.”

“Courfeyrac… I’m scared,” Enjolras admitted.

Courfeyrac nodded solemnly.  He understood exactly why.  He was one of the few people who could honestly say they understood Enjolras.  In general, this man was not at all afraid to die, but he wanted to die on a barricade, not in the privacy of someone’s home.  He wanted to die in a way that would contribute to his cause.

“Listen,” Courfeyrac whispered.  “You’re not going to die here, alright?  Not today.  You want to know why?  Because I trust Jehan to find us a good, trustworthy doctor, and I trust that doctor to help you.  Now look, Irma and I think it would be best if you lie down.  We cleared the table off, and I know the wood isn’t as comfortable as the couch, but—”

“It’s like the makeshift beds in our café infirmary,” Enjolras noted, finishing Courfeyrac’s thought for him.

“Do you think you could stand up and move over there?” his best friend asked, gesturing to the table.  His eyes were full of worry.

Enjolras nodded, then winced as he stood up.  Courfeyrac gripped his hand for support, and kept a close eye on him as he slowly made his way to the table.  He sat down on it, then waited a moment before lying down.  The bullet in his side made everything hurt far more than it should, but he managed.  He lay there for a few moments, staring at the ceiling.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard a knock at the door, and some people talking urgently.  Then came hurried footsteps, and his other best friend was at his side.

“It’s going to be okay, _mon frère_ ,” Combeferre murmured.  “You’re going to be okay.”

~

They spent the night there, all four of them.  Combeferre stayed by Enjolras’ side the entire time.  Courfeyrac and Jehan could have left, but they chose to stay as well.  They didn’t want to leave their friend behind.

Irma found places for all of them to sleep, and even made them breakfast in the morning before they left.  They thought it wise to get up early and get a head start before Paris really woke up: the less people in the streets, the less likely someone would notice their wounded friend.  They also suspected he might need more time than usual to walk back to their headquarters, and they wanted to give him as much as they could manage.

After breakfast, the Amis headed out the door, eager to get back to their own hideout and their planned missions.  Before they left, however, Enjolras turned and gestured for Irma to approach.

“Mademoiselle,” he whispered, his hand on his new bandage.  “The Resistance thanks you.”

She quickly shook her head.  “No,” she whispered back.  “I don’t need that thanks.  The less I know about who you are, the better, I think.  I helped a fellow citizen, a friend of a friend.  That’s all.”

Enjolras nodded.  He could easily respect that.  “Of course,” he told her.  “We will leave you alone now.  But thank you for all your help.”

She smiled and wished them luck as they left.  Then Courfeyrac turned around in the doorway, whirling on his toes, to say one last thing he had almost forgotten to mention.

“If you need anything, call us,” he said, looking Irma in the eye and smiling again in that charming way of his.  She could have sworn he winked at her.  She shook her head and smiled as she stood in the doorway, watching as they made their way down the Rue Saint Honoré at dawn. 

 _Jean-Jacques’ friend is even more handsome than he is,_ she couldn’t help thinking as they walked away.  Then they turned a corner, and she closed the door, having no need to watch the street anymore.  Instead, she sat back down at her breakfast table, where she immersed herself in memories of the previous night and speculation about who he could possibly be.


	13. Party at Valjean's: No Police Allowed

The house at No. 55 Rue Plumet had never seen as much life and laughter as it saw in December of 1941.  Gavroche and some other street children ran in and out, one at a time depositing all kinds of food at Cosette’s feet.  One little girl placed a whole basket full of fruit, almost a cornucopia, on the kitchen floor as carefully as if it were a baby, then blushed and ran away before Cosette could say anything.  Another child gave her a couple of potatoes and a wheel of cheese.  Gavroche smirked in his cocky way as he produced an entire turkey from inside his jacket – how he got it in there, Cosette could only guess. 

Three short raps on the window made her look up.  Éponine stood on the other side of the glass, smiling and giving a thumbs-up signal.  Cosette placed the turkey in the sink and carefully opened the window.

“The coast is clear,” ‘Ponine whispered.  “Just thought you’d want to know that so far, you’re good to go.”

“Thanks,” the other girl responded.  Then, glancing at the food on her counter, she thought of something.

“Hey, Éponine, one of the kids brought me potatoes… do you know how to make latkes?”

“Uh, no?”

“Would you like to come in here and help me try?” Cosette asked sweetly.

Éponine was silent for a minute as she mentally processed the request.  She glanced around at the yard and the street beyond, thinking hard and analyzing every detail.  Then, making up her mind, she nodded once to Gavroche to signal him to take her place on watch duty, slipped silently around the side of the house, and in no time, joined Cosette on the other side of the window.

“That was fast,” the hostess observed.

Éponine shrugged.  “I’m good at getting into places,” she replied.

Cosette decided not to question it. 

“Okay, so how much do you know about latkes?” Éponine asked.

“I know they’re made with potatoes,” Cosette replied, blushing a little.  She always felt awkward admitting that she didn’t know how to do something.  Even though she knew the Thénardiers could not hurt her anymore, she remembered the days when she would have been punished for not knowing.

“This’ll be fun, then,” the other girl mumbled in her snarky way. 

Together, Éponine and Cosette tried every way they could possibly think of to make the small potato pancakes.  Both of them dashed around the kitchen, seizing everything they saw which looked vaguely relevant or useful, and trying it out.  It started to resemble one big culinary science experiment.

“’Ponine, look in that cabinet above your head, do we have any flour left?” Cosette asked about an hour into it.  Éponine looked, found the flour, and moved to deliver it.  She didn’t get very far, however, before she slipped and landed flat on her back on the kitchen floor.

“Oh, sorry.  I, uh, may have spilled some milk there earlier,” Cosette muttered.

“It’s okay, I’ve had worse,” Éponine assured her and she sat up.  “Just put that skillet down and get down here, help me clean it up.”

As soon as Cosette placed the skillet back on the stove, Éponine reached out a hand as if asking for help standing up.  Cosette took her hand, and, with a mischievous smirk, Éponine pulled her down too, and they both collapsed on the floor in a pile of giggles, covered in flour.

At that exact moment, Feuilly came running in through the doorway.  He skidded to a stop when he saw the two girls on the floor.  Marius followed behind him after making sure the door was shut and latched.

“My God, Cosette, you look almost like a ghost!” he cried when he saw her.  Feuilly smiled.

“You know, that’s not the first time he’s called you that,” he told Cosette as Marius helped her stand up.  Then, noticing that no one was helping Éponine to stand, he stepped around Cosette and offered her a hand.

“What?” Cosette asked, glancing back and forth between the two boys curiously.  “What do you mean?”

Feuilly smiled again with the memory of it, then began reciting a quote: “A ghost you say, a ghost maybe, she was just like a ghost to me.  One minute there, then she was gone… Marius, stop me when you remember it.  I am agog, I am aghast…”

Marius was beet red.  He stared down at his shoes, but Cosette was watching him so patiently and so sweetly.  Finally, he managed to tell her the story of how, after the first day they met, he wasn’t quite sure she’d been real.

Cosette laughed, that laugh that always sounded like angelic bells ringing.  Then she lightly kissed her adorable boyfriend on the cheek, stood back, and beamed at him, full of love.

“I’m very real,” she whispered.

“Well this is all very interesting, but don’t we have a mission or something to do?”  Éponine’s voice cut through the romantic moment like a knife in the dark.  She stood in the middle of the room, full of tension, her fists clenched at her sides.  She looked as though she’d been holding her breath.

“Are you okay?” Feuilly asked her, his voice kind.

“I’m _fine,_ ” she hissed, sounding very much not fine.  “Let’s just get back to what we were doing before the kissing, okay?”

That brought everyone back down to Earth.  Feuilly helped them finish the latkes – it turned out he was very good at making them – and soon, other Amis arrived.  Cosette got Marius to help her set the table, and all of his friends joined in to help as well.  The whole thing began to look more and more like a very lively party.

Éponine slipped out the door after pocketing enough food to tide her over, and went to sit outside to eat.  Gavroche had found a good perch on the garden wall where he could watch the goings-on in the street and not look suspicious.  She sat next to him and handed him a latke while staring out at the nighttime Paris streets.

“Never fall in love, Gavroche,” she whispered.  “It hurts like Hell.”


	14. In It For the Long Haul

“This is bullshit,” Jehan muttered under his breath as he reviewed the piece he had just written.  Or rather, it was the piece he was trying to write.  He hadn’t managed to finish it yet, but this was the biggest piece of news of the week: Germany invading the South of France.  Jehan knew the people needed to know about this one.  What’s more, the people needed to understand the consequences of Germany’s latest actions.

It had been over two years since Les Amis’ resistance to the occupation started, and just about two years since Jehan had started _La France Libre._  Since then, _La France Libre_ had developed from just a series of fliers and artwork to a fully fledged underground newspaper, complete with subscribers all over Paris and carriers who risked their lives distributing it.  But so far, Jehan had mostly been contributing bold inspiring poetry to the paper, and the other Amis had been contributing opinion pieces, essays, and personal accounts of their raids and the like.  However, the paper had picked up a good number of readers in the past year, and some of those people wanted to hear news about the situation in the rest of the world.  Jehan thought it best to start including some newspaper-style articles along with the editorials, but he just didn’t know how to go about it.

“Having problems?” Feuilly asked from across the room.  He had been fiddling with an old radio, trying to get it to work, but he stopped when he noticed Jehan’s annoyance.

Jehan groaned.  “Yes, like you wouldn’t believe.  I’m no good at this type of writing,” he complained.  “I’m a poet, not a journalist.  I have no idea how to tell this story.”

“Aren’t you in journalism school?” Feuilly asked.  He didn’t mean to sound rude, but he had assumed that Jehan’s professors would have taught him something about journalistic writing by now.

“Yes,” Jehan admitted, “but writing for the official newspapers is different.  You have an editor who tells you what you can and can’t publish.  You can’t write anything that might be seen as too inflammatory, or too opinionated even.  And the editors don’t want to get in trouble with the occupying army, so there’s really not much I’d be allowed to say.”

“Sounds oppressive,” Feuilly muttered.  Jehan mumbled his agreement.  He was never meant to be a newspaper writer anyway.  He was meant to be a poet in the mid nineteenth century, a Romantic, one of those free thinkers whose ideas shaped whole nations.  All of his poetry drew on that idea of freedom from oppression, and all of his editorial writing spoke of a world without chains.  He leaned back in the chair and began to daydream about writing poetry in a meadow full of bluebells, the way he used to when he lived in the South of France.

“Maybe you could wax poetic about what the South used to be like, before the Nazis got there,” Feuilly suggested.  “It’s your home, after all.  You could really put it in perspective, how much destruction those fascists are causing every day.  Or if you don’t want to go that route, maybe you could wait until Enjolras gets back, and he might be able to give you some ideas on what to write… unless that would be too much like those editors you were complaining about.”

Jehan smiled.  “If Enjolras was my editor, I would have no problems at all.”

Feuilly nodded.  “Yeah.  We’re really lucky to have him as a friend.”

“Talking about our Fearless Leader?” a voice called out, booming enthusiastically in the small basement room.  Jehan and Feuilly looked up just in time to see Bahorel burst in the door, his face red with excitement – the kind of excitement he only got from one thing.

“Which Nazi did you punch this time?” Feuilly asked, smiling at him.

Bahorel shrugged.  “I don’t know their names.  Some SS bastard.  Fearless Leader was there, too, he saw it.”

“It was fantastic,” Enjolras said as he walked in, just minutes behind Bahorel.  “Now, hopefully, they will hesitate before trying to occupy the Place Saint Michel in the future.  This part of the city is ours, my friends.”

Jehan’s eyes lit up and a smile spread across his face like ink across a parchment.  “Could you do an interview for the underground paper?” he blurted out, surprised at how bold he had become all of a sudden.  “This is so much more exciting than some stuffy report about more German occupation or a tighter food ration.  This is actually good news.  The people would _love_ to read some good news for once!  Please, Enjolras?”

Enjolras thought about it, carefully mulling over every aspect of the idea in his head.  He had hesitated from doing newspaper interviews in the past, because he’d been afraid the establishment papers would twist his words around and make the Resistance look bad.  He had also been afraid they would publish his name or a photo along with the interview, and that he would get arrested.  But this was different.  The underground newspaper run by his friends would not twist his words around or expose him, and they would be sure to get the story right as well.  Making up his mind, he nodded at Jehan.

“ _La France Libre_ is possibly the only paper I would pay any mind to now,” he admitted.  “But in this time of lies and oppression, our underground paper is one of the only trustworthy news sources, isn’t it?  Alright, let’s bring the people some good news about the true Resistance.  They’ve heard enough of the German’s version of us: let’s tell them what is really going on.”

~ 

Across town, three students left the law school in a state of unease.  To Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Marius, attending classes in the middle of a war felt strange.  They felt like they should be out fighting Nazis instead of sitting in lecture halls.  Or at least, if they had to sit in the lecture halls, their classmates should be acting more unnerved at the situation going on around them.  But despite the absence of all their Jewish classmates, things at the law school seemed to be going on just as if there was no war at all.

That did not sit will with Les Amis.  Bossuet had even gotten so worked up in the middle of class that Monsieur Blondeau, the professor, had to ask him to leave the classroom.  It had not been the first time.  Worried for Bossuet, Courfeyrac and Marius went to speak to the professor after class to plead his case.  Afterwards, they met their friend outside on the steps of the law school.

“He’s going to expel me, isn’t he?” Bossuet asked as soon as he saw the look on their faces.

“He didn’t say that,” Marius promised.

“Well, he didn’t say that _specifically,_ ” Courfeyrac added.

“You didn’t have to talk to him for me,” Bossuet said as they began to walk back to their apartments together.  “Honestly, I don’t even mind if I get expelled.  It’s not like I _want_ to be a lawyer.”  He laughed.

“What do you want to be?” Marius asked, after an awkward pause. 

Bossuet thought about it.  Finally, as they walked past the Eiffel Tower, he came up with an answer.

“I want to be a husband to Musichetta.  A good husband, like the kind she deserves.  But I also want to be a husband to Joly.  I know that’s illegal, but I don’t care.  We love each other.  When I think about having a future, well… it always has both of them in it.  Maybe someday we could raise some kids together.  We could raise them to be the best kids in the world: fun-loving, adventurous, rebellious, just like us.”

“What if they rebel against _you_?” Marius asked.

“Whatever!” Bossuet cried.  “They’re allowed to.  But I know this question of what am I going to do for a living is a pressing one, and I honestly am not sure how to answer it.  I’m no lawyer, and I’m not cut out to be a doctor like Joly either.  All I know for sure is that I would fight to defend Joly and Musichetta, and our family if we have one, to my last breath.  Other than that, I just don’t know.”

Courfeyrac was watching him closely as he spoke.  Then, as Bossuet trailed off, Courfeyrac pointed out the obvious statement that had been on his mind.

“You want to be a resistance fighter,” he said.

“Well, obviously,” Bossuet whispered, glancing around to make sure no Germans or French policemen were listening in.  “But that’s already true, now, isn’t it?  But that’s not going to be a lasting deal.  This war has to end eventually.”

“It will, and hopefully there will still be a world to live in after it,” Courfeyrac said.  “I think there will.  But I like to live in the here and now.  And right here, right now, there is some fun to be had.”  His eyes had that kind of mischief in them that meant he had something devious on his brilliant mind.

As an answer to the unspoken question that Marius and Bossuet had not asked, Courfeyrac tilted his head slightly to the right.  His friends followed the subtle point, and saw three Nazis watching them from the shadows at the base of the Eiffel Tower.  Courfeyrac then began whistling innocently as he strolled along the sidewalk near the Tower, looking for all the world as if he were simply a college student heading back from classes with nothing else on his mind.

Marius and Bossuet hung back a little bit and watched the situation unfold.  When they saw that the three Nazis had taken the bait, and all three were watching Courfeyrac like a hawk, Marius and Bossuet snuck around behind one of the legs of the Eiffel Tower and waited for their moment to come.

The Nazis surrounded Courfeyrac almost casually, like a gang that wanted to talk for a little bit before they started fighting.  Courfeyrac played his part and pretended to be surprised.  Then he started chatting with them, almost in a friendly sort of way, to test the waters and see what kind of confrontation this was. 

His friendly chatting did not lighten the mood whatsoever, and he knew these particular men were out for blood.  They were probably getting restless in the occupied city, he thought, and they had gone out looking for trouble.  Maybe they had expected to find an unsuspecting citizen they could bully for a while.  They had not expected to find a resistance leader.

Out of nowhere, when he had been talking amiably with them only moments before, Courfeyrac swung forward with his fist and punched one of the Nazis square in the jaw, sending the man reeling backwards into the Eiffel Tower’s base.  At that moment, Marius and Bossuet leapt out from behind the Tower and lunged at the two soldiers still standing, knocking them off their guard.  The brawl that ensued proved that the three Nazis and the three Amis were pretty evenly matched as far as battle prowess was concerned.

When they had been battling for five minutes, Courfeyrac found himself pinned by one of the soldiers, the cold metal of the Eiffel Tower pressing into his back.  However, he did not feel worried for an instant: over the Nazi’s shoulder, he could see several people walking by on the sidewalk, some of whom he recognized from the Polytechnic school.  He grinned, mentally congratulating himself on recruiting these people to the Resistance.

Swiftly, he whistled, and the Polytechnic students turned and saw him and the others caught up in the brawl.  Immediately, once they recognized their friend Courfeyrac, they threw themselves into the fight as well, and they quickly had the Nazis on the run.  The army of students chased the Nazis all the way back to the Gestapo Headquarters on the Rue des Saussaies, taunting them all the way.  Seeing their handiwork, the leader of the Polytechnic Resistance cell turned to Courfeyrac and beamed.

 _“Vive la Résistance,”_ he said to Courfeyrac.

 _“Vive la Résistance!”_ Courfeyrac cried for the whole street to hear.  Then, hearing the sounds of several officers rallying inside the HQ, Courfeyrac, Marius, and Bossuet decided it was probably a good time for them to leave, and they turned and ran toward home.

~

“Good evening, citizens, I hope you are having a safe one,” the radio correspondent began.  “My name, for the purposes of tonight, is Tadeusz, and you are listening to the Free French radio.  It is November 12, 1942, and we are broadcasting tonight in correspondence with La Résistance de l’ABC, so thank you very much to resistance leader Maximilien for lending me his base of operations.”  Here, Feuilly cast a glance at Enjolras, who stood in the corner watching.  “Maximilien is actually here tonight as well, and I will be interviewing him shortly, but first, we have a few updates to share with you all.

“This week, the Allies have made several important advances.  They now hold the beaches of North Africa, from Morocco to Tunisia.  The Nazi-collaborationist forces of Vichy, France, who used to hold that region, are in retreat.  But, in less exciting news, Nazi Germany is now occupying the South of France with a stronger force, instead of letting the Vichy collaborationists run it by themselves.  Looks like they’re retaliating against their own allies now.  What this means for the war in general, however, is still unknown.”

“I have a message for our comrades in the South of France!” Bahorel called out, and Feuilly moved over a little to let him speak into the radio transmitter.

“You have to resist!” he cried into the radio, his voice powerful and strong.  “It’s going to get bad, and I mean really damn bad, but you have to keep fighting the Fascist Bastards with as much force as you’ve got.  Get help from the Spanish maquis!  They’re in your region and they’re here for one reason only: to fight fascism.  They know how to do it, too: they’re some of the best damn fighters I’ve seen.  Ally with each other!  Band together!  Tear up the pavement, blow up railroads, sabotage factories, do whatever you have to.  Take.  Those.  Nazi.  Bastards.  _Down._ ”

Applause rang out from the corner of the room, and Feuilly and Bahorel saw Enjolras standing there, a look of pride on his face.  His applause was loud enough that the people listening in via the radio could probably hear it, too.

“Citizens, that’s Maximilien that you can hear clapping,” Feuilly said into the transmitter.  To Enjolras, he asked, “Do you have anything to add?”

“Only this,” Enjolras said, sitting down next to his friend at the radio.  “Stay strong, citizens.  The Resistance exists all over the country, and we are not backing down.  I implore those of you in the South to join your strength to ours, as my friend has said.  Meanwhile, we are active here in Paris as well.  I would like to let everyone know that we have allies all over Paris ready to rise up, we have been fighting the Germans since Day One, and we are in this until the end.”

“What have you personally been doing to fight the Nazis?” Feuilly asked, using his best radio news correspondent voice.

Enjolras smiled, although his listeners could not see it.  “I am proud to say I have led troops into battle.  After all, this is a war we are fighting.  We are not going to defeat the Nazis by being nice to them.  I have led skirmishes at the Nazi outposts outside of Paris, and I have led raids against them at all the places where their troops have set up camp.  We have reclaimed weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, and food from them, as well as some art we discovered that they stole from the Jewish community.  We must keep the pressure on: we must show them that France does not fall easily.  We must show them what the people of this country are capable of.”

“What about those who are unable or unwilling to go to war against the Nazis?” Feuilly asked.  “We have listeners and supporters who don’t know how to fight, or who can’t fight physically.  What should they do?”

“Resist in whatever way you can,” Enjolras replied.  “If you are a shopkeeper, consider donating some supplies to someone you know who is fighting.  If you have a house, consider letting it shelter those who need a place to hide.  Keep your eyes and your minds open, and if you see an opportunity to throw a wrench into the German war machine, you take it.  And above all: do not fall victim to their propaganda.  Remember who is on your side, and what is at stake, and keep flying the flag of freedom high.”

He paused for a moment to glance around the basement of the Café Musain.  More of his friends had gathered there while he had been speaking.  Combeferre and Courfeyrac sat at the table with Jehan, all of them listening intently to their friend’s words.  Jehan had been taking rapid notes as well, and Enjolras knew a story about this radio broadcast would appear in the next edition of their underground paper.  In another corner, Joly stood with Bossuet and Musichetta, all three of them hugging each other close as they listened to Enjolras speak.  Marius and Cosette were doing the same only a few feet away.  And Bahorel and Feuilly, of course, stood nearest to the radio, ready to add their voices back to the broadcast if need be.

Enjolras turned back to the radio transmitter, his heart emboldened by the sight of his friends, and by the looks of pride on all of their faces.  If they were by his side, nothing could stop him, of that he was certain.

“I have one thing left to say,” he told the radio audience.  “My people do not back down.  If you are an ally, we will fight with you.  If you are a citizen of France, whether you are Jewish, Romani, homosexual, or whoever you are, we will fight _for_ you.  And if you are a Nazi, we will fight against you with everything we have, either until you leave France for good, or until all of us are dead.  And let me tell you this: you can kill one resistance fighter, but you _cannot kill the Resistance._   And that is a promise.”

Feuilly’s voice was quiet as he wished the listeners a good night and thanked them for tuning in.  When the radio went dead, he turned to face the room.

“Well, if they weren’t listening before, they had better be listening now.”

“They’ll listen,” Enjolras promised.  “Tomorrow, we should launch an attack on the Nazis like nothing they’ve seen before.  Something that will show them we’re a force to be reckoned with.  Something that will show the world what the French Resistance can do.”

His eyes might as well have been made of living flame as he said this: such was his passion and his fury.  He didn’t quite have a plan put together yet, but they didn’t need to know that.  He was the archangel Michael incarnate, and he had just realized he had a national audience, possibly an international audience.  In this moment, he could take on the world.

“The time for mere raiding is over,” he declared.  “The real fight is about to begin.”


	15. A Trip to the South of France

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little more serious. It's gonna get more serious from here on out.

The sun had set several hours ago, and the curfew time had long since past, when Éponine finished walking around the Rue Plumet area and decided to head for home.  She had been trying to avoid going home as often as possible lately, and had instead spent several nights sleeping on park benches or inside abandoned warehouses.  Tonight, however, it was storming so violently that the wind rattled the rooftops and the rain and snow threatened to break into every nook and cranny.  She doubted she’d be able to find shelter quick enough, and she felt guilty staying at Cosette’s.  Besides, she missed her sister.

When she arrived at the Gorbeau house, she was surprised to find it full of people.  At least ten people were crammed into her family’s small apartment, and only three of them were related to her.  Looking around at them all, Éponine sighed.  She knew this group.  Why did they have to be meeting here tonight?  She just wanted to sleep.

She muttered apologies as she stepped on various toes on her way around the room.  Finally, she found Azelma and sat down on the cot next to her.

“’Zelma, what is dad’s gang doing here tonight?” she asked her sister in a whisper.  “They’re not thinking about going out in this storm, are they?  It’s a real killer.”

Azelma shrugged.  “I don’t know.  They’re planning some kind of thing I suppose.  I haven’t really been listening.”

Éponine sat back and listened to them discuss things for a while.  Her father talked about some enterprise he had going in the South of France, and several of the others seemed to be involved as well, or at least they knew about it.  Over the next few minutes, Éponine could tell that several of them seemed on edge.  She leaned forward, hoping to figure out why.

“What do you care about the Southern camps, anyway, Thénardier?” Babet asked.  “They’ve been there for years.  There’s no profit there anymore.”

“But there could have been!” Thénardier cried.  “Remember that worthless little sewer rat I took in?  The mother was running from the cops or something like that?  I could have turned that kid into the feds and we’d all be sitting pretty in Vichy right now, living like kings.  But no, _someone_ suggested we keep her on as a servant girl.”  He cast a nasty glance at his wife, who scowled back at him.  “And now look at us: the sewer rat got away, we’re still poor, and now we’ve got nothing to trade.  But we could try that again.”

“Are you suggesting we go back to the Midi-Pyrenees and try the scam with the refugees along the border again?” Claquesous asked.  “How many of them are even still down there?  I’ve got better work here.”

“The camps still exist,” Brujon said.  “I heard some of the guys in prison talking about it.  There might be something there.”

“Maybe we could offer an escape route,” Babet suggested, his mind turning.  “But then just turn them in and collect whatever reward there is…”

“I still think our options are better here,” Claquesous said.

Éponine stood and slipped over to the corner, where Montparnasse was leaning gallantly against the wall.  She nudged him to get his attention, and when she got it, he smiled warmly at her.

“’Ponine!” he cried.  “I’ve been missing you lately.  Where’ve you been?”

“Never mind that,” she whispered.  “What’s going on at the Southern border?  What camps are they talking about?”

Montparnasse glanced at her in surprise.  He had assumed she had been in on the first endeavor with the camps.  “They’re some internment camps that the Vichy government set up down there,” he explained.  “Their guards wear some really nice looking uniforms, brass décor on them and everything.  I’ve been hoping to get me one.”

Éponine rolled her eyes.  She couldn’t care less about Montparnasse’s desire to kill a camp guard in order to steal his uniform, but she did need more details about the camps in general.  Taking his lapel in her hand, she began to gently pull him toward the door.  She knew some hidden corners in the hall outside where they could talk more privately.

“You’re going to tell me everything you know about them,” she said.  Montparnasse just nodded.  He liked Éponine too much to try denying her something like that.

~

The soft rapping on the window woke Courfeyrac from his sleep.  He had only just gotten to sleep anyway, so there was not that much harm done, he supposed.  Yawning, he shuffled over to the one small window in his bedroom and slid it open.  The open window allowed a few snowflakes and an underfed teenage girl to quietly enter the room.

“Marius,” Courfeyrac yawned, gently kicking the mattress on the other side of his room.  “Your friend is here.”

“Wha…?” Marius mumbled, struggling to pull himself out of his dreams and into reality.

“You should tell her that we have a perfectly functioning door,” Courfeyrac said, then went back to bed.

Marius sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes.  Éponine stood there in the darkness of the small bedroom, watching him in silence.  The slight smile on her face looked almost like the one Marius made whenever he looked at Cosette.

“Éponine, what are you doing here?” he asked, still half asleep.

“I have some information I think you might like to know,” she said.  She looked proud of herself now.  “You should be happy I brought it to you.  I thought of you first, Monsieur Marius.  I thought oh, Marius needs to know about this right away!”

“Well, what is it?” he asked.

“Internment camps in the South of France.”

Courfeyrac sat up in bed too when she said that.  He and Marius had both just forgotten all about sleeping. 

“Who is in them?” Courfeyrac asked.

“Refugees, mostly,” Éponine replied halfheartedly.  She didn’t look at Courfeyrac when he spoke.  She only had eyes for Marius.

“Uh, where is this happening?” Marius wanted to know.  That made her smile.

“I can point you to exact locations on a map, monsieur, and tell you what the security is like.  I can tell you how many guards they each have, what their weaknesses are, and what is the best way to get in.”

Marius just stared at her.  His sleep-riddled brain could barely comprehend this information.  He had not expected to be presented with this kind of thing, especially not at 2 in the morning in the middle of what was quickly becoming a blizzard.

“Why did you bring this to me?” he stammered out.

“You’re nice,” she blurted out, blushing a little bit.  “Not like my other friends.  And besides, I know what you’ve been doing.  I thought you might like to know.”  She didn’t add the real reason why she had come to him: that she hoped he would admire her more if she brought him and his friends some useful intelligence.

Marius made eye contact with Courfeyrac across the room.  Right as he began to ask “do you think…” Courfeyrac answered the unspoken question.

“Enjolras needs to know about this.”

Marius nodded.  “Should we wait until morning, or…”

“No,” Courfeyrac interrupted, jumping out of bed and pulling some shoes on.  “We should tell him now.  There’s no time to waste when it’s something like this.  Come on, he’s probably still at the Café, that silly angel.  I love him, but he needs to learn what a good sleep schedule is.”

~

A day later, Les Amis crouched in the bushes near a camp in Vernet, watching the guards pace back and forth in front of the gate.  Éponine had given them good information: there were just as many guards as she had said there would be, and the security around the camp looked almost exactly like her description of it.

“Okay,” Enjolras whispered.  “Now’s our chance.  Let’s move.”

Silently, they crept closer to the camp, all the while making sure no one spotted them.  Then, from out of a bush near the gate, a knife flashed, and a guard sputtered, clutching his neck.  Montparnasse quickly seized the man and pulled him down into the bush, but the other guard had noticed.  He started to cry out a warning to the rest of the camp’s security force, but Feuilly leapt out of another bush and tackled him from behind.  As Feuilly wrestled with the Nazi collaborationist in front of the gates, Courfeyrac and Combeferre took on the reinforcements that were approaching from the West, while Bahorel took on those approaching from the East.  When they saw that it had devolved into an all-out brawl, the rest of Les Amis joined in, and the guards were soon outnumbered and overpowered.  They hadn’t expected a small army of resistants to suddenly appear like that, and they were unprepared.

Enjolras strode over to the bush where Montparnasse had hidden, reached into the shrubbery, and pulled the murdering dandy out of his perch.  Montparnasse had the camp guard’s jacket halfway on.  The man’s half-naked body lay partially obscured from view in the underbrush.

“You are lucky this was a fascist,” the angelic leader said, gesturing at the body.  “I do not tolerate the murdering of civilians in my resistance unit.  Understand?  You are allowed to kill those who wear the Nazi uniforms, but no one else.”

‘Parnasse shrugged.  “At least I get to kill someone.”

Enjolras made a grimace.  He hated having to work with people like this, but in this instance, the murderer’s skills came in handy. 

“Does he have a key to the gate?”

Montparnasse felt through the pockets of the jacket, and eventually found a key and held it up.  Enjolras seized it from him and marched over to the gate, unlocking it easily.  Combeferre helped him pull it open, and then, undaunted, the two Amis led their procession of resistants into the internment camp.  Enjolras gestured for someone to check the guard tower for surviving Vichy troops, and Feuilly ran off to do it.

Slowly, people began peering out from the doorways of buildings, then they emerged entirely and stood in the streets of the camp, watching Les Amis as if they weren’t sure what to think.  Then, one of them stepped forward, apart from the crowd.  He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, a man with the look of a soldier.  His eyes had a look that Enjolras’ eyes might well have held if he had been through similar internment.

“Who are you?” this man asked.

“French Resistance,” Enjolras declared.

“How long have you been here?” Combeferre asked, stepping forward.  “We’ve had news from Vichy, but not about any internment camps.”

“I arrived here in 1939,” the man said.  “As did most of my company.  We’ve been interned here for three years.”

Combeferre stared for a moment, then shook his head in disbelief.  He had not expected this.  He had not expected anything like this whatsoever.

“Well, you’re free now,” Courfeyrac said.

To all of their surprise, the man looked sad.  “Not all of us,” he muttered.

Combeferre looked up as if begging him not to say what he was about to say.  But then Jehan said it.

“They killed some of you.” 

Les Amis looked over, and saw Jehan standing by a pile of stones that had been very clearly arranged by hand, and arranged in a deliberate and precise manner.  They realized as they looked at it that it was a makeshift grave marker.  Jehan stood next to it, looking at the marker, but speaking to the interned man.

“Several of us died of disease,” the man admitted, his voice low.  “But they let German soldiers come in and take others of us away.  We don’t know where.  It was a while ago.”

“How many?” Bahorel asked.

“Hundreds.  There used to be a lot of us in here.  Mostly veterans of the civil war in Spain, but not all.  There were French civilians, too.  Anarchists.  Communists.  Jews.”  He glanced at the dirt when he said this.  “They used to have a prayer group in here, with pretty good attendance, too.”

While Les Amis stood there, trying to process this information, a scream erupted from behind them and they turned around just in time to see a guard fall out of the tower by the gate.  Joly ran over to where he had fallen, scrunched up his nose, and turned back to Les Amis making a disgusted face.

“Oh, he’s dead,” Joly reported.  “His guts are spilling out.  It’s very gross.”

Les Amis and the newly liberated prisoners glanced up at the guard tower expectantly.  Feuilly appeared at the window, looking down at the guard’s body, then at his friends.

“He managed to get a call out before I got to him,” Feuilly called out, loud enough for them to hear him on the ground below.  “I think we’re going to have company soon.  Probably a lot of it.”

Enjolras’ eyes hardened and he looked back at the people in the camp with a determination that had not been there before.  However, before he could say anything, one of them spoke.

“My people still know how to fight,” the Camp Vernet resistance leader promised.  “In fact, I think most of us would love to get back at it.”  The people behind him punched their fists into the air in agreement with his declaration.

“Great.  You still need to get out of here,” Combeferre insisted.  Everyone seemed to agree on that part, so Enjolras and Combeferre rallied Les Amis, the formerly interned fighter rallied the others, and all of them began charging out of the internment camp like the Devil was on their heels.

Some of the liberated people began to scatter as soon as they were away from the camp’s walls.  They ran into the woods, or toward the nearby town, or just away.  Others, however, stayed grouped together.  They were a resistance unit, Les Amis noticed, and they could fight cohesively as one whole. 

They got the chance to exhibit their fighting prowess very soon, in fact, when three cars full of Nazis rolled down the road to meet them.  The newly liberated resistance fighters battled like Leonidas’ 300 Spartans, viciously pulling Nazis from cars and ending their lives in whatever way possible.  Les Amis joined in, and the Nazis were outnumbered.  They did not last.

More cars approached from the North then, barreling down the road as if determined to run over everything in their path.  Bossuet’s jaw dropped when he saw them.

“It’s like an entire squadron,” he whispered.

“We can take them,” Bahorel declared.

“Did you bring weapons?” a liberated prisoner asked.

“We’ve got you covered!” Courfeyrac cried, tossing him a handgun as he ran to take a good strategic position near the road.

The resistance fighters split into two groups as the squadron of German cars approached.  Each group fell backward into the woods on either side of the road, blending in with the trees, so that to the Germans, it looked like the entire Resistance had just melted away.  When the cars drove through that section of road, however, Les Amis and the Camp Vernet team leapt from behind the trees, firing at will and rushing the Germans from both sides.

Unfortunately, the thing about SS officers is that they are highly trained, and soon, Les Amis and the other fighters found themselves being pushed back through the woods, getting farther and farther away from the road that would lead them back to their homes.

“We’re going to need something better than handguns,” the Camp Vernet resistance leader hissed, pinned up against a tree and brawling with a soldier.  Bahorel dispatched the soldier for him and then handed him some plastic explosives with a bright grin on his face.

“Will this work?” Bahorel asked.  

The resistance leader nodded and took the explosives.  German bullets shattered tree branches all around them as an idea came into his brain.

“I’ll create a diversion,” he said to Les Amis.  “You all should get out of here.”

Bahorel made a gesture to Enjolras telling him that they should retreat, and Les Amis began running through the woods toward where they had left their cars.  Behind them, they heard an explosion, and Bahorel turned to just in time to see the Camp Vernet resistance team darting away through the woods.  He gave them a salute, although they couldn’t see it, then quickly joined his brothers as they reached their cars.  Enjolras and Courfeyrac leapt into the driver’s seats immediately, and started the engines while their friends continued holding off the stray SS officers who had followed them instead of buying into the Vernet diversion.

Combeferre quickly slid into Enjolras’ passenger seat, and Feuilly, Jehan, and Bahorel squished themselves into his backseat with Jehan, the skinniest of them, in the middle.  At the same time, Marius jumped into Courfeyrac’s passenger seat, leaving Joly and Bossuet to sit together in the back.  Someone noticed somewhere along the way that Montparnasse had run off into the woods in a random direction, but they didn’t have enough time to worry about it.  The SS probably wouldn’t pursue him anyway, since he had stolen the dead camp guard’s jacket and insignia.  Thinking only of escape, Enjolras and Courfeyrac pressed their feet to the gas pedals and sped off down the road towards Paris.

The SS followed them, as Les Amis knew they would.  They gave chase for several hours, the two Resistance cars always just a few steps ahead.  However, as they approached Lyon, the cars began to run out of gas, and Les Amis still couldn’t shake their pursuers.  What’s more, the SS had set up a roadblock near Lyons, and three more German cars blocked the way in front of them while their pursuers bore down on them from behind.  Taking matters into his own hands, Courfeyrac twisted the wheel sharply to the right, and his car bumped down a grassy slope on the side of the road.  Enjolras followed suit, turning his wheel the other way so he would not have to worry about crashing into Courfeyrac’s car and four of his friends.

As the car careened off the road, Bahorel jumped out of it, hitting the ground in a roll so as to brace his fall, and immediately began firing at the SS as soon as he got to a sturdy position.  Enjolras leapt out himself as soon as the car came to a stop, and he and Combeferre pulled Jehan and Feuilly out of the backseat.  Together, the four of them ran through the hail of bullets to meet up with their friends on the other side.

“Bahorel!” Enjolras called out as they crossed behind the place where he had chosen to make his stand.  “Come with us, we’re retreating!”

“I can hold them—” Bahorel started to say, but Feuilly would not have it.

“You don’t have enough bullets, my friend!” he cried.  “You’ll die!”

“Bahorel,” Combeferre added, shouting over the storm, “one man alone can’t face down an entire battalion.”

“Oh yeah?  Watch me!”

“Today is not your day to die for the Cause,” Combeferre insisted.  _“Come with us!”_

The fearless brawler heard their words, and thought about dying.  He had always imagined he’d go out like this, but perhaps Combeferre was right.  It did not have to be now.  It did not have to be here.  He glanced behind him, saw a way open, and took it.  Running at full speed, he followed Enjolras, Combeferre, Jehan, and Feuilly, still firing shots behind him as he went.

Once all of the Amis were back together, they crouched behind a large rock and took stock of their injuries.  Most of them had been wounded in some way during the battle, if not earlier during the liberation of the camp.  Bahorel had several bullet wounds, and Marius had a few.  Combeferre and Feuilly had also been grazed in the crossfires while they were running, and Feuilly also had been injured in his long fight with the tower guard earlier.  Bossuet also had sustained some injuries in the most recent firefight, despite the fact that he was not one of the ones who’d had to run through a hail of bullets to reach safety.

“Well,” Courfeyrac stated upon seeing them all gathered like that, many of their faces tight with pain.  “We’re on the run, we have no cars anymore, and we’re still several hours out of Paris.  Another bold day for the Resistance.”

“It’s an adventure,” Bossuet said, laughing, as he held his hand over his bleeding side.  “We can talk about this one for years to come!”

“Don’t forget the part where mostly all of us are injured, while still being hundreds of kilometers away from home,” Combeferre added, wrapping a strip of his jacket around Feuilly’s arm as a makeshift bandage.

“And the part where the SS are literally right on our tail,” Joly added.

“Truly, an adventure worthy of the history books,” Bossuet declared.  “They will sing our praises, my friends.  This has been one amazing ride.”

“So, what’s the plan now?” Marius asked, speaking up for the first time in a while.  He had a cut on his forehead that was beginning to leak blood down his face.

They were silent for a while.  Courfeyrac glanced at Enjolras and Combeferre, who glanced at each other, then back at him.  The others looked around in various directions.  No one seemed to know what to say.

Then Jehan spoke up.  “My parents live in a village outside of Lyon,” he said.  “They have a pretty big house, a lot of land.  It can’t be that far away from here, and I know they’d take us in for the night.”  Thinking about it, the poet added, “they might even be able to lend us some supplies, and some cars for tomorrow.”

Not having any other plans to work with, Les Amis unanimously decided to follow Jehan’s lead.  Bold all of a sudden, Jehan led the way out from behind the makeshift shelter, and to his parents’ house.  There, they could rest and heal, and make their way back to Paris when the coast was clear.


	16. Springtime for Germany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.

As it turned out, Jehan’s parents did agree to take Les Amis in, fed and sheltered them for that night, and got their wounds taken care of.  In fact, Monsieur and Madame Prouvaire were so helpful that they convinced the band of resistance brothers to stay in hiding at their house in the country for the entire winter holiday season.  Some of them had been shot, after all, and needed time to recover before getting back on the road.  At least, that was the official excuse.  Les Amis suspected that the Prouvaires simply wanted to spend more time with their only son.  The bonus was that they also got eight additional radical schoolboys to spend the holidays with.

They celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah with the Prouvaires, and once the spring weather came, they had healed enough that they felt comfortable moving around more freely outside the house.  Marius especially was eager to get back to Paris: he had not been able to send any word to Cosette of his whereabouts for fear that the Nazis would intercept the letter, and so he had spent the winter months away from his girlfriend, in hiding, while she did not know what had happened.  It drove him to the brink of madness to think of her in the dark like that, wondering where he must be.  So, once the weather and their health improved, it was Marius who suggested they try to make the move back to their stronghold in the City of Light.

On a summer day in 1943, Jehan paced back and forth across the floor in the hidden Café Musain room.  Sunlight streamed in through the window, and it felt like it was pulling him outside, calling him to come and enjoy the warm day.  He glanced back at his notebook, where he had been working on writing a new story for the underground paper, _La France Libre_.  Writer’s block had been getting to him again lately, however, and he had no idea what to do with the story.  Besides that, he felt like he wanted to participate more in the Resistance besides writing the newspaper, distributing flyers, and occasionally going on raids.

He looked up at the window again, and made a decision then and there.  He could be of more help to the Resistance if he left this tiny little back room.  So, pulling on his boots with determination, Jehan Prouvaire decided to go for a walk.

He breathed deeply as he walked down the street toward the marketplace.  It was a nice day, and he was glad to be outside enjoying the sunlight, but even still, he could not completely calm the churning in his stomach.  It had been there since occupation: a constant anxiety that refused to go away.  He knew it would not leave until the Nazis did… if the Nazis ever did.  With each passing year, and with each allied Resistance fighter who disappeared, the churning got worse.  That was part of why he breathed so deeply now.  It wouldn’t make the anxiety go away, but it would help calm it down, at least a little.

As he entered the marketplace, he looked around, trying to quiet his stomach by taking his mind off the occupation.  The sun really was quite beautiful, and it shone on the rooftops, spilled down the façades and onto the street, illuminating each stone.  _Bahorel would think about using those paving stones for a barricade,_ the poet thought with a smile.  But he was not Bahorel.  He was Jehan Prouvaire.  When he saw the sunlight hit the stones, he thought of the tiny little flowers that would grow up through the cracks instead, and how those little blossoms would make someone smile.

The churning in Jehan’s stomach picked up again when he noticed the German soldiers dispersed throughout the marketplace, even though it was hardly a surprise to see them there anymore.  They were there every day now.  They’d been there for years.  Jehan just hoped they would not notice his fear.

“ _Bonjour_ , Jehan!” the flower-seller called from his stall, waving Jehan over enthusiastically.

“Camille!” Jehan called back, smiling widely now as he skipped over to the stall.  “How have you been?  Beautiful day!”

“There are still clouds on the horizon,” Camille replied, with as much ease as if he was actually talking about the weather, “but I’m doing well.  How is your family?”

“They’re well,” Jehan said, referring to Les Amis of course.

“And… your work?”  He almost hesitated to ask.

Surreptitiously, Jehan cast a glance toward a cop lurking nearby, then back to the flower-seller.  He hoped the officer had not noticed Camille’s hesitation.

“I’m not here for work this time,” he lied quickly.  “I’ve got a date, and I need a bouquet of flowers to give her.  Let’s see… I’m going to need eight pennyroyals, surrounded by white heather, and one red rose.  And, for the center of the bouquet… do you have any edelweiss?”

“As a matter of fact, I do!” the flower-seller assured him, quickly setting to work arranging Jehan’s requested bouquet.  Jehan smiled for two reasons.  One, Camille whistled while he worked and Jehan found it very endearing.  And two, he absolutely adored the secret language of flowers.  What a wonderful way to send messages back and forth!

Camille handed Jehan the finished bouquet with a smile and a wish of good luck on his date, and Jehan thanked him graciously, and cradled the flowers gently in his arms as he set off across the marketplace.

She noticed him before he spotted her. 

“Hey, baby, I was afraid you weren’t coming after all,” her voice said from behind him, and he whirled around.  When she saw the flowers, her eyes lit up in what Jehan knew was faked enthusiasm.  “Are these for me?  Oh, you shouldn’t have, you’re so sweet.  Come on, let’s get out of here and find someplace a little more… private.”  She winked, and some nearby men snickered inappropriately.

“Éponine, how do you always manage to do that?” the poet asked.  “You just appear out of nowhere every time.  Where on Earth were you hiding?”

She smiled in a way that told Jehan he would probably never find out the answer to his question.  “No one knows Paris like I know Paris,” she whispered, and then smirked.

The two of them walked away together, arm in arm, until they got to a small alleyway where they could escape the crowds.  As soon as they were out of everyone’s eyesight, Éponine dropped the flirtatious façade.

“That was awkward, but you were being watched and I didn’t want us to be followed.  Sorry, Prouvaire, you’re really not my type.”

“It’s okay,” he reassured her.  “You’re not mine either.  And thanks.”

“So, what’ve you got for me?” she muttered, more to the bouquet than to Jehan.  Her eyes glanced over the flowers quickly, but they absorbed every detail.  Jehan noticed she lingered on the red rose longer than the others.

Pennyroyals signified fleeing away.  She counted eight pennyroyals, so eight people fleeing.  White heather was for protection.  The fleeing people would need that, and it was her job to provide it.  Edelweiss meant the Alps.  Switzerland.  Their destination.  And the red rose… Montparnasse had once given her one.  She smiled slightly – this was clever.  She doubted very much that these eight fugitives would be hiding with Montparnasse, but they could definitely be in the district that shared his name.  Better yet, she knew exactly where.

After taking it all in, she nodded.  “Message received.”

“You got it?” Jehan asked, nervous again.

“Sure do.  And here’s my part of the deal.”  She pulled a small parcel out of her bag and handed it to him.  Inside, Jehan noticed a baguette broken into pieces, a bit of turkey, some cheese, and even a small jar of jam.  Evidently, she and Gavroche had been very successful.

“Gav took the rest of it to Plumet already,” she said.  “This is for your other friends.”

“Thanks,” Jehan whispered.  “I’ll take care of this immediately.”

“You’d better take the bouquet back,” Éponine said, handing it to him.  “It makes for good cover.  And it would get in my way.”

“Plus, it’s pretty,” Jehan added.

She shrugged.  “That too.”

And then, their transaction complete, Éponine Thenardier and Jehan Prouvaire went their separate ways, fading back into the crowd as if they had never seen each other before in their lives.  Éponine headed out to find Cosette so she could give her a heads-up about the eight guests that Rue Plumet would host that night, while Jehan wandered off in the general direction of Saint Michel, soaking up sunlight and thinking about who to give the stolen food to.

~ 

“Just a second!” Joly called when he heard the knock at the door.  As he and his lovers pulled their clothes back on, he whispered to the two of them, “go hide in the back and I’ll deal with this, whatever it is.”

The knock came again, and he recognized the secret pattern his friends had devised for knocking.  The person at the door must be one of Les Amis.  Still, in case they were being watched, he gestured for Bossuet and Musichetta to hide, then grabbed his cane and went to get the door.

Jehan stood there, smiling brightly and holding a bouquet of assorted flowers. 

“How are you, _mon ami?_ ” he asked.  “How is everything?”

“Well, I can feel another cold coming on,” the young hypochondriac replied, but then he chuckled.  “But I suppose that’s normal.  Everything’s fine… all things considered, of course.”

Jehan nodded knowingly.  “I have something that might help you,” he said, revealing the extra rations hidden underneath the flowers.

Joly’s eyes widened at the sight of it.  Then, as he tore his eyes away from the food to look back at his friend, they widened even more, in terror this time.

Jehan whirled just in time to meet the gestapo officer face to face.  The Nazi angrily marched up to the two Amis and seized the food that Jehan still held.  As if in response, Jehan clutched the flowers even tighter, so he could at least hold on to something.

“Well, well, what is this?” the officer demanded, in a tone that suggested he thought he already knew exactly what it was.  “There is quite a lot of food in here, gentlemen.  Good quality, too.  Where did you get it?”

Jehan and Joly were silent, staring at the officer with faces carefully blank of emotion.

“That’s fine, no need to tell me.  You stole it.”

“No, we—” Joly protested, but the Nazi just scoffed at him.

“And the flowers?”

“They’re for a date,” Jehan repeated.  In case this man had overheard him with Camille earlier, he felt he needed to keep the story straight.

“With a woman?” the Nazi asked, raising his eyebrows as if he doubted that. 

“O-of course.”

“Then why were you presenting them to this man here?”

Jehan tried to string together some sort of excuse about a double date, about how the two of them were going to meet their girlfriends right after this, and about how they were students and friends and nothing more.  Joly nodded and agreed with everything Jehan said, insisting that this was the true story, but the man from the gestapo office didn’t seem to buy any of that.

“Really, the two of us are not seeing each other like that,” Jehan insisted, perfectly honestly.  “He has a girlfriend.  We’re just…”

“There is no need to steal this much food from the Reich for one date, gentlemen,” the Nazi announced, his voice official, like he was a detective solving some crime.  “This is too much to feed just two people, or even four people, if your story about the double date is true.  No, unfortunately for you, you will not be going on your _date_ today.  I believe you are harboring fugitives.  We will find them.  In the meantime, you are both under arrest and you’re coming with me.”

Joly tried to hit the man with his cane, and Jehan tried to punch him, but it turned out the Nazi had backup.  The gestapo quickly outnumbered and surrounded the two Amis. 

As they were led away, Jehan silently thanked God he’d been able to get the message to Éponine in time.  He thanked all the gods, just in case.

~

Bossuet picked up the spilled container and gathered the food and flowers which had scattered all over the floor in the brief struggle.  Some of it still looked usable, he thought with mild relief.  Still, that was not enough to cover up the feeling of immense terror that gripped him now.

His life had played cruel tricks on him before, countless times, but this was by far the cruelest.  Unwittingly, he clenched his hand into a fist, accidentally cutting it on the thorns of the red rose from Jehan’s bouquet.

“Just my luck,” he muttered under his breath.

Musichetta ran back in through the still-open front door and carefully stepped around her boyfriend, and only then did Bossuet realize she had left the house. 

“They’re in a truck driving West, I think toward the eighth _arrondissement_ , but I can’t be sure,” Musichetta told him all in a rush.  “But there are more soldiers coming here, probably to search the house, and we have to go now.”

Bossuet had finished cleaning up the food and the flowers, and now sat on the floor holding Joly’s cane, which had been left behind.

“They knocked this out from under him,” he whispered.

“Bossuet.  We have to go.  Now.”  Gently, she held his arms and helped him stand.

Bossuet took a deep breath and then nodded once, solemnly, determined.  Then, hand in hand, he and Musichetta slipped silently out the back door of their house at the same moment that the gestapo marched through the front door.  They missed each other by mere seconds.


	17. Pontmercy and the Germans

That same night, on the other side of Paris, Marius and Cosette were on a date.  They sat at a booth in one of the nicer restaurants in the city, one that was coincidentally frequented by members of the occupying army as well.  On this particular night, it just so happened that three Nazi officers sat at the booth right next to Marius and Cosette’s.

Marius sat with his back to their German neighbors, while Cosette sat across the table from him.  She smiled in her sweet angelic way, and pulled him back to Earth when he seemed to be getting too distracted.  They talked a little bit about love and art, and days gone by, but a lot of their time was actually spent eating in peaceful silence, watching each other eat, and admiring each other from across the table.

At the booth next to them, the three officers laughed raucously.  They drew the attention of most everyone in the restaurant, but Marius and Cosette went largely unnoticed.  After all, Paris was used to young lovers smiling at each other across a table.  It was not yet used to loud German soldiers, even though they had been there for almost three whole years now.

“The commandant has to start going easier on us,” one of the officers complained in German.  “We’re not the resistants he hates so much.  We’re on his side.”

“Yeah, but you remember what happened with Stülpnagel last year, don’t you, Eric?  After arguing with Herr Commandant, he suddenly resigned…”

“Don’t complain too much about old Commandant,” another of the officers put in.  “He’s probably under just as much pressure from higher up.  The Führer yells at him, he yells at us.  That’s just how it goes!”

Most of the other restaurant patrons tried to ignore this yelling.  They couldn’t understand what it was about, anyway, because most of them did not speak German.  Marius, on the other hand, quietly pulled a napkin closer to him and scribbled a few names down on it while everyone else was distracted by the yelling.  Cosette smiled at him again and reached to take his hand across the table.  He slipped the napkin into her hand, and they resumed their conversation about love.

A little while later, as the conversation in the restaurant died down and the clock ticked ever closer to their curfew, the two lovebirds stood up to leave.  Cosette quietly slipped the napkin into the pocket of her dress, as if it was her handkerchief, and Marius placed some cash on the table for the waiter.

“You are leaving already?” one of the Germans asked them, speaking French now.  His French was tolerable, but very rough.  He looked at Marius and Cosette like he was reluctant to see them go.

Marius turned around to face the three German officers he had been eavesdropping on all night.  Sweat started to bead on his forehead as he tried to think of what to say.

“She lives with her elderly father,” he finally explained, not even bothering to make up a fake story.  “We should really go back to take care of him.  We don’t want to leave him on his own for too long.”  Cosette nodded in agreement.

“We’ve been sitting in the booth next to you two all evening, but we have not introduced ourselves,” the officer said.  “My name is Hans.  This is Klaus and Eric.  What are your names?”

Marius glanced at Cosette for a brief second.  Enjolras had told him never to give away his actual name to a German soldier.  He thought through a few options for a split second before settling on one he could use: hopefully, the late Colonel Pontmercy wouldn’t mind.

“I am Georges, and this is my girlfriend.”

“Euphrasie,” Cosette said, politely extending her hand as a greeting.

“Have a drink with us?” the German named Hans asked.

They felt awkward saying no to just one drink, but at the same time, they knew they should be leaving.  Courfeyrac was waiting for them at his apartment.  He needed the intelligence written on Cosette’s napkin handkerchief so that he could transfer it to Enjolras.  These three Nazis had spent the whole night talking about their chain of command.  The Resistance needed to be informed.  Besides, it was almost curfew.

Then again, if they left, the Nazis might follow them.  Cosette felt that it looked suspicious, how badly they wanted to get away.  Gently, she squeezed Marius’ hand.

“I don’t think it is seemly for a woman to drink with soldiers,” she explained to the Germans, trying to hide the shaking in her voice.  “But I do understand your desire to be neighborly, and I can respect that.”  Inside, she laughed bitterly at that line.  Neighborly?  As if.  Good neighbors didn’t invade their neighbors’ gardens and then uproot all the flowers.

“Still, I really must go back to my papa…”

Marius took one bold step forward then.  “If you will allow her to go home to her father, we can all rest assured that someone is taking care of him, no one has to do anything unseemly, and we men can still have our drinks.”

She glanced at Marius with surprise and alarm, but had to agree it sounded like a good plan.  It seemed to her to be the only way to avoid being followed.  Besides, Marius might learn even more intelligence by having a conversation with them.

“Alright,” the Germans agreed.  Marius nodded, and Cosette smiled, albeit a little sadly.

“Here is some money, take a cab,” he murmured under his breath to her.  “Be safe.”  Then he kissed her on the cheek before watching her walk away.  His eyes lingered on the doorway even after she had gone.

“That’s quite a woman,” Hans muttered in German.

“I agree,” Marius said.  He smiled at the look of shock on Hans’ face when Hans realized that this Frenchman spoke his language.  He was still smiling as he sat down at the bar, ordered a beer, and then made up a story about having some German heritage and having spent part of his childhood near Munich.  As expected, the story went over very well with Hans, Klaus, and Eric.

After a little while, the other two soldiers wandered sluggishly back to their base, leaving Hans and Marius to have a one-on-one chat.  From the way Klaus and Eric swayed and leaned against each other as they walked, Marius found himself wondering if they would actually make it back to base that night.  He also found himself wondering if perhaps these men should go up against Grantaire in a drinking contest.

“So, where did you say your family was from again?” Hans asked.  It became clear that Hans was not nearly as drunk as his friends, and was very interested in the fake story Marius had made up about his heritage.  Sweating a little, Marius tried to make up some more details, but the truth remained: he had never actually been to Germany.  Feeling like this was a dangerous line of conversation, he decided to cut the evening short as soon as he could.

“I should really go catch up with my girlfriend,” Marius mumbled, glancing nervously at his watch as if he were late for a date.  “She will be missing me.”  Then he slid off the bar stool and practically ran out the door.

The Nazi watched him leave, just as he had been watching Marius and Cosette the entire evening.  A few moments after Marius left the café, so did he, headed in the same direction.

Hans was not the only one watching someone that night, however.  Little did he know that a girl sitting in the shadows had not taken her eyes off of him from the moment he stepped through the door.  She had arrived at that restaurant shortly after finishing her other work for the day.  She was there with Marius, although they had not been sitting together, and she had taken a keen interest in this whole exchange.

Éponine cursed under her breath when she saw the Nazi follow Marius out of the café.  Then, swiftly as a dagger in the dark, she followed him.

The streets looked mostly empty to Marius as he walked briskly away from the café and toward Courfeyrac’s house.  Thinking of Cosette, who should be with Courfeyrac by now if all had gone well, made him walk faster.

He walked on for a few more blocks, thinking about Cosette and Courfeyrac and the information that Cosette carried, when he suddenly noticed a street sign out of the corner of his eye and did a double-take: he had become so lost in thought, he’d walked right past the street he was supposed to turn on.  Mentally chiding himself, he turned around…

And came face to face with Hans.

The French resistant and the Nazi both froze in place.  Marius didn’t think he had given this man any reason to suspect him during their talk at the café, and Hans hadn’t expected Marius to whirl around quite so quickly.  They both stared at each other, equally shocked.

Then Hans pulled out his pistol.

“Whoa, hey now,” Marius protested, hands up, but he couldn’t think of what else to say.

“I am under direct orders to shoot you on sight,” the Nazi reported.  His voice didn’t have any of that friendly, conversational tone he had used in the café.  Now it was just authoritative and cold.

“By whom and on what charges?” Marius asked, heart pounding.  Maybe he could lawyer his way out of this one?  Silently, he thanked Bossuet for helping him stay in law school.

“I don’t need to tell you that, resistant,” the Nazi scowled _.  Shit._

“Listen, Hans, maybe we can—” but he never got to finish his sentence.  The gunshot that cut him off echoed down the street.  The sound rebounded off the houses and took up the entire space they stood in, so that it felt as though there was nothing else there, just a frozen time frame and a gunshot.

For a split second, Marius didn’t fully understand how he was alive.  He felt his chest for a gunshot wound and found none.  Then he noticed the figure on the ground.  She faded into his vision as if his eyes had to adjust to the sight.

_Oh God, ‘Ponine…_

He took a step towards her, ignoring the Nazi who still stood there, stock still, like a sentinel.  A friend needed his help, who cared about one Nazi?

“Is she Resistance too?” Hans asked.

Marius glared at him.  “Shut up,” he hissed in German.  “She’s a teenage girl, and you just shot her.  She’s my friend, and you shot her in front of me.  Go tell your Herr Commandant you shot a girl, see if he gives you a promotion for that.”  He searched for a sign of humanity in the Nazi’s eyes, some sign that his words meant something to the man.  When he was just met with more coldness, and because he was so full of so many emotions, he let loose a string of German curse words he had learned a long time ago.  He’d never had a use for these words until now.  He walked forward until Éponine’s body was the only thing in between him and the Nazi he had been chatting with in the café, shouting at the man in his own language the entire time.

Hans slowly lowered his gun, but didn’t move.  Marius didn’t seem to care.  He punched Hans so hard he heard his jawbone break, and when the Nazi had run off back to his base, Marius turned his eyes back to Éponine.  Before he knew it, he found himself kneeling on the pavement, holding her in his arms.  She looked up at him and smiled.

“I knew I could get you to hold me like this eventually.”

“’Ponine, shh, just stay still,” he started, not really sure what to do.  Her blood was everywhere already, and even though he was not a medical student, he could tell she didn’t have long. 

“Marius…”

“Shh,” he said again.  “It’s going to be okay, I can carry you to a safe place, and we’ll find a doctor… God, but there’s so much blood,” he added in an undertone.

“It’s just a little fall of rain,” she whispered.  “I can barely feel it… don’t let go.”

He cradled her there, in the street, under the light of the street lamp which had illuminated the gun barrel, and which now shimmered its reflection in her blood.  He lost track of how long they sat there.

“You know something, Marius?” Éponine whispered after a while.  “I do believe… I was a little bit in love with you.”

She fell limp in his arms then, and he knew she was gone.  Carefully, he picked her up and glanced around the street.  No one else was there.  Slowly then, step by step, not even caring that they were out past curfew, Marius carried Éponine the rest of the way to Courfeyrac’s house.  He hoped that someone there would know what to do.


	18. The Angel of Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm sorry. This one is really violent. Tw: mild torture

A few days later, Les Amis gathered in Combeferre’s family’s house for their secret meeting.  They had been changing up their meeting places so as not to draw too much unwanted attention to Madame Hucheloup and the Café.  At Combeferre’s kitchen table, Feuilly sat softly humming to himself as he folded, unfolded, and then re-folded several papers into various fan shapes.  Enjolras and Combeferre also sat at the table with him, talking softly about science and medicine and a few other things.  Enjolras had spread a map of Paris out on the table a while ago, but no one spoke of it yet.  Meanwhile, Bahorel and Grantaire leaned against the counter by the window, playing cards and trying to make conversation.  No one made a move to start the meeting yet.  They were waiting for the rest of their friends to arrive.

After a while, Combeferre glanced at the clock and coughed as if to draw attention.  The other Amis glanced up at him.

“It’s twenty minutes past rendezvous,” Combeferre quietly reminded them.  He didn’t have to say what that might mean.

Enjolras’ eyes flashed with worry.  “Do you think we should send a scout to—” he began, but at that moment, the front door opened and closed, and Courfeyrac ran into the room.

“Sorry I’m late,” Courfeyrac muttered.  They noticed that he seemed to be lacking his usual excited flare.  “I’ve got some bad news, I’m afraid.  There’s been a casualty.”

“Who?” Combeferre asked, fearing the answer.  He fervently prayed that it was nothing too serious, that it was something they could heal, even though he knew from Courfeyrac’s tone that it was most likely far too late to help whoever had been hurt.

“Éponine,” Courfeyrac whispered.

“Is she…?” Feuilly asked, but Courfeyrac shook his head no. 

“So, Pontmercy, Cosette, and Gavroche won’t be coming to this meeting,” Courfeyrac said, his voice almost a whisper.  “They took her body out to a place where they could bury her in peace.”

Silence fell for a few moments, as no one really knew what to say.  Éponine had always been rather secretive and elusive to them.  She came and went as she pleased, and she only ever really talked to Marius.  Still, she’d been a part of the Resistance, and she’d died as a part of the Resistance.  She was the first to fall, and somehow, they knew she wouldn’t be the last.

“Can someone go to Joly’s house and find our other friends,” Enjolras said finally.  “We need to get this meeting started as soon as possible.  Our job just got a lot harder, I’m sorry to say.”

Bahorel slipped quickly out the door, but returned only a few minutes later with a very worrying expression on his face.  Bahorel didn’t get spooked very often, so when he did, it spooked everyone else too.

“The trio isn’t at their house,” he announced gravely.  “And there were signs of a struggle there.”

“We’re fucked,” Grantaire groaned, and went to search through Combeferre’s cabinets for a bottle.

“What do you mean, signs of a struggle?” Feuilly demanded.  “What did it look like?”

Before Bahorel could answer, Bossuet and Musichetta burst through Combeferre’s front door, slamming it shut again behind them with a bang loud enough to wake up the whole block.  Les Amis jumped to their feet, ready for a fight, but breathed a sigh of relief when they saw who it was.  Bossuet and Musichetta took a moment to catch their breath, then Musichetta noticed that everyone seemed to be gathering in the kitchen, and she pulled Bossuet in after her.

“We’ve been in hiding, we didn’t know how to contact you without giving our position away,” Musichetta explained.  “We just followed Bahorel back here, but be careful, because I think the gestapo might be looking for us.”

“They took Joly and Jehan!” Bossuet blurted out.  Some of the Amis looked horrified, and others just looked shocked.  The room muttered with various degrees of discomfort.

Enjolras stood up immediately, kicking his chair behind him furiously as he did so.  “Where?” he demanded.

“Eighth _arrondissement,_ ” Musichetta reported.  “At least I think…”

“That’s where the Gestapo HQ is,” Courfeyrac told the room.  “Some other students and I chased some Nazis back there a few months ago.  Number 11 Rue des Saussaies.  That’s where they’ll be.”

Everyone fell silent again.  Musichetta hugged Bossuet for comfort.  Bahorel pulled a knife from his belt and began inspecting its blade.  Grantaire sighed and took a swig from the wine bottle he had found.  The leading trio and Feuilly gathered around the map on the table, and soon, the others followed suit.  In one moment, their entire plan had changed.  This meeting was now a strategy session, and nothing else mattered except for finding Joly and Jehan.

Enjolras leaned forward to consult his map like a military commander considering the field of battle.  The fire in his eyes told everyone in the room that he intended to fight, as soon as possible and as hard as he could, until victory or death.

“Alright,” he announced after only a few moments.  “Here is where we are currently, in the residential district near the hospital, and our friends are over here, on the Rue des Saussaies.”  He pointed to each location as he mentioned them.

“It will take us the better part of an hour to walk there,” Combeferre noted.

“Which is why we need to hurry,” Enjolras stressed.  “We need weapons.  Their headquarters will be heavily guarded.  Courfeyrac, do you have all the guns?”

Courfeyrac nodded.  “They’re at my place, only a few minutes away if I run.”

“Run, then,” Enjolras commanded.  “Meet us at our place in the old faubourg Saint-Honoré, we’ll launch the attack from there.”

Courfeyrac bolted, and Enjolras turned to address the rest of the room.

“We need to get ourselves to the faubourg Saint-Honoré without being detected, so we need to leave in small groups.  Do it just like we’ve done before.  Blend into the crowds, and don’t draw attention to yourselves.  Once we meet up with Courfeyrac and distribute the weapons, we’ll need to attack immediately, so I need all of you to be ready.”  He glanced around at all of them as he spoke, and they nodded.  They were nervous, but they would stay true.

“This is going to be the most dangerous thing we’ve ever done,” Enjolras cautioned.  “I’ll understand if some of you want to stay behind…”

“We’re all in,” Bahorel declared.  He cracked his knuckles, then attached the freshly-sharpened knife to his belt like a soldier getting ready for battle.  His eyes gleamed with anticipation of the fight to come.  Everyone else in the room nodded their approval as well.

“I’ll get on the radio and try to contact some of the other resistance cells,” Feuilly said.  “In case we need backup.”

“Go ahead, Feuilly,” Enjolras encouraged.  “The rest of us, if we’re all in on this, should head out now.  I’ll meet you all in the faubourg in an hour.”

Bahorel and Grantaire headed out first, followed a few minutes later by Bossuet and Musichetta.  Enjolras and Combeferre were last.  Feuilly stayed in Combeferre’s kitchen for a few more minutes, watching the last of his friends walk away before going to find the radio and get started on his mission.  If luck was on their side, he might be able to raise a whole battalion, and they would have Joly and Jehan back before the hour was out.

~

In their hideout on the Rue de Faubourg Saint Honoré, Les Amis gathered to prepare for war.  Courfeyrac had hidden their armory in the back of his parents’ car, which he had parked right outside the building.  When Bahorel and Grantaire had arrived, they had helped him move the weapons discreetly into the building without drawing attention.  Bossuet and Musichetta got there in time to help them make sure everything was in working order, and fully loaded, so by the time Enjolras and Combeferre arrived, they were good to go.

“I snuck around the corner and investigated the place, from cover of course,” Bahorel reported when Enjolras walked in.  “It’s crawling with Fascist Bastards, as we knew it would be.  Also, we don’t know what part of the building Jehan and Joly are in, but I’m willing to bet they’ll be separated.”

“Once we get in the door, we’ll need to split into two teams,” Enjolras commanded.  “I’ll lead the team to find Jehan.  I need a volunteer to—”

“I’m leading Joly’s team,” Bossuet insisted.

Enjolras nodded.  “That’s settled then.  Bahorel, getting us in the door will be your responsibility.  No one is to shoot until after we’re inside.  We don’t want to get into a street battle here: we would never reach our friends in time.  When we are inside, fire at will, but conserve bullets.  We don’t have an endless store of ammunition.”

“And take extra ammo with you,” Courfeyrac added.  “In case you run out.”

Enjolras picked up his favorite pistol, checked the ammo, and then concealed it carefully under his coat.  Everyone else did the same, and soon, they were out the door and marching around the corner to attack the headquarters of the most hated men in all of Paris.

“Okay, ‘Taire, you’re up,” Bahorel whispered as they got closer to the front door.  They had apparently already planned something on their walk to the hideout.

As Grantaire approached the door, Bahorel got into position in the shadows of a nearby alley, unsheathed his knife, and waited.  The other Amis lingered on the sidewalk, among a few other civilians, trying to look inconspicuous.

“Hey,” Grantaire greeted the man on guard duty, “You look like you could use a break.  How long have you been standing around out here?  Come on, I know a great bar nearby.”  Putting his arm around the man’s shoulders, he steered him away from the door and closer to Bahorel’s alley.

“I am not supposed to leave my post…” the guard protested, but Grantaire shushed him.

“No one has to know.  Believe me, these army command types, they don’t care about the guys on the ground one bit.  Come get a drink with me, a quick one, and we’ll be back before your commander even notices you’re gone.  You can trust me, do I look like the kind of guy who has tricks up his sleeve?  I’m just an honest drunk.  And I’m doing you a favor here.”

The guard must have seen some truth in Grantaire’s words, because he let the cynic lead him a few steps away from his post.  However, they only got a few steps when Bahorel sprung out of the alley, seized the man, and pulled him into the shadows, slitting his throat in a quick, clean motion and leaving the body where it lay.

“I could have actually distracted that guy like I said I would,” Grantaire complained.  “He wouldn’t have been a problem.”

“We need you with us,” Bahorel argued back.  Then he gave a signal to their friends, and walked into the Gestapo Headquarters through the front door, with Grantaire somewhat reluctantly following behind.

“Hey, what are you—” another guard called out before a bullet from Enjolras cut his sentence short. 

Les Amis looked around, backs to each other, each one protecting the next.  They’d made it inside, but now they realized they had no idea where to go.  Suddenly, Musichetta darted behind the Nazi’s desk and started ruffling through papers, looking for a map of the building or some kind of record that could tell them where their friends would be.

The sound of dozens of boots running made her look up from her search, and quickly, Les Amis formed a protective circle around Musichetta and the desk, their weapons drawn.

“Okay, _mes amis_ , we hold this position until ‘Chetta finds a map,” Enjolras announced. 

Then the building’s defense team arrived, and the real fight began.

~

Jehan Prouvaire had made a point in his life to never hate anyone.  Now, however, he had to make an exception for the Third Reich.

His cell was small, with not much in it besides a chair.  One lightbulb dimly illuminated the place, and he could make out markings on the walls.  He had been reading these markings for the past two or three days, however long he had been there.  “I am afraid,” someone had scrawled in a frenzy on the wall near the chair.  “Never confess,” someone else had written.  Other prisoners had inscribed their names and dates as a sort of testament for history.  The dates were all within the past three years.

When Jehan was alone, he carved his own name in the wall to add to the testimony.  He also carved a message to go with it.  “Jehan Prouvaire – Vive L’Avenir,” it said.  “Long Live the Future.”  Being quiet and shy didn’t mean he couldn’t also be bold.

Of course, Jehan wasn’t alone all the time.  A high-ranking SS officer often came and went from the cell.  The Nazi knew that Jehan was gay and Jewish.  Still, he didn’t kill him right away, because he also seemed to know that Jehan was a high-ranking Resistance member who might have valuable information.  Jehan couldn’t help but wonder who had told him that.

“Hey, you want names, right?” Jehan asked the SS officer the next time he came into the room.  An idea had suddenly come to him.  “I can give you names.”  He glanced at his captor, and sure enough, the man looked surprised.  He hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

“Dante Alighieri,” Jehan reported.  “André Chenier.  Lord George Byron.  Mary Shelley.  William Shakespeare.”

“What are you doing?” the officer asked.

“These are the names of people who inspire me,” Jehan explained.  “William Wordsworth.  Oh, and Victor Hugo!”

The next punch sent the poet reeling backwards.  He hit his head on something hard and collapsed on the floor with a thud.  He could feel something wet there, like a pool of some liquid, dark and sticky.  He blinked a few times.  Blood.  His forehead was dripping blood on the concrete.

He tried to get back up, but he couldn’t, and the SS officer kept hitting him again and again.  Jehan realized after the third time that the officer was using a police truncheon, not just his fists.  That must explain why it hurt so much more this time.

Spots of light began to dance before Jehan’s vision like little fairies dancing among the flowers.  Except there were no flowers here.  No fairies.  And this time Jehan thought for sure that he was going to die in this room.

 _Never confess._   He had to remember that.  He had to stay strong.  That’s what Enjolras would do.

After a while, the beating stopped.  The officer knelt to look Jehan in the eye, forcing the truncheon under Jehan’s chin and jerking it upwards so that Jehan had no choice but to look at him.  “Tell me how far the Resistance’s influence extends and the names of all those involved, and I may be persuaded to let you live.”

Jehan glared.  “If you think I would so easily betray my friends, you need to think again.”

“I will give you one last chance to comply,” he warned, in that horrible way of his.  Jehan responded by spitting a mouthful of blood in the Nazi’s face.

Then the Nazi hit him again, and he blacked out.

~

The echoes of ricocheting bullets filled the halls, mixed with the screams of wounded men.  Blood stained the carpet red, and everywhere they stepped, it squished beneath their feet.

Bahorel brawled in the thick of it all, slashing and punching, felling every attacker who came at him.  Courfeyrac screamed a furious war cry as he shot at the gestapo, back to back with Enjolras, who had joined his call.  Bossuet and Grantaire had found shelter in a doorway, and shot from there, creating a crossfire that the Nazis had to run through to get to their friends.  Even Combeferre took part in the violence, shooting the Nazis in the kneecaps so that they fell to the ground, unable to chase anyone down.

“Uh, there’s a problem!” Musichetta called from behind the desk. 

“You don’t say!” Grantaire sassed back.  “Whatever could it be, I wonder?”

“All of their documents are in German.”

“Then that desk isn’t going to help us,” Enjolras declared.  “Marius isn’t here to translate them, and we’re losing time.  We need to find our friends.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have killed that first guard,” Combeferre suggested quietly. 

“And let him kill us instead?” Enjolras questioned.  “No, I had to shoot him.”

At his feet, a gestapo agent with a shattered kneecap coughed, and Enjolras glanced down.  Frowning, he aimed his gun at the man’s head, preparing to fire.

“No, don’t shoot!” the man cried in broken French.  His voice shook, and he didn’t seem to be able to look Enjolras in the eye.  “You… you are l-looking for your f-f-f-friends, yes?  I… I can help.  Who are they?”

Enjolras shared a glance with Combeferre, then turned back to the wounded Nazi.  He didn’t move his gun.  “Two students, in their twenties.  A doctor and a poet.  They were taken a few days ago.”

The man looked grave.  “Yes,” he said after a while, “I know them.  Your doctor friend is being held for later.  They need his skills.  His cell is that way.”  He pointed.  “The other one… he is in interrogation now.  Has been since he got here.”  He pointed in a different direction.

“Bossuet,” Enjolras announced, nodding significantly toward where the Nazi had said Joly’s cell was.

Bossuet nodded.  “‘Chetta, Grantaire, with me,” he said, then sprinted down the corridor, dodging around the dead and wounded gestapo bodies on the ground as he went.  Enjolras shot the Nazi at his feet, then led the rest of the group the other way, toward where he hoped they would find Jehan.

“His commander would have killed him if he knew he helped us,” Enjolras whispered to Combeferre as they ran down the hall.  “Think of that as a mercy shot.”  With all the gunfire still echoing in his ears, he couldn’t hear Combeferre’s reply.

~

Joly leaned against the wall of his cell, trying hard not to panic.  He’d been alone in there for who knows how long, and the writing on the walls didn’t make him feel any better about his situation.  At any moment, the gestapo or the SS could come in and do whatever they wanted to him.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to run, even if he tried – he couldn’t even walk very well without his cane, and they’d left it behind.  He took a shallow, shaky breath and thought about Bossuet and Musichetta.  Had they made it out okay?  Had they been shot?  Were they in two other cells somewhere in this very same building, being tortured?  He didn’t know if he could handle thinking about that.

 _Alright, Joly, deep breaths,_ he reminded himself.  _This is anxiety.  You know how to deal with anxiety.  In through the nose, out through the mouth.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Breathe in, breathe out…_

The worst part was Jehan, though.  They had been separated as soon as they arrived, and he worried for the safety of his friend.  He had no speculation about where Jehan was.  He knew.  And the reality of it was horrifying.

_They will come for me when they’re done with him._

Almost as soon as that thought occurred, the door opened, and an austere-looking SS officer with a somewhat wrinkled black uniform stepped into the room.  The man had a spatter of blood on his face, and on his uniform Joly could see even more of it.  Whose blood was that?  _You know,_ his brain told him.

“What have you done with Jehan?” Joly demanded, hoping his voice sounded strong.

“Your friend?  He’s actually the reason I am here,” the Nazi said.  Whether or not he meant it to, his voice sounded very menacing.  “You see, I appear to have injured him more than I intended to.  You must understand I need him to remain alive, at least until he tells me what I need to know.  You _are_ a doctor, yes?  You will follow me.  Now.”

Joly hesitated for a moment, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, unsure.  The officer turned around at the door to glance back at him, and raised a blood-spattered eyebrow questioningly.

Joly sighed, and then carefully stood up.  His leg twitched a little underneath his weight.  Then, hesitantly, he took a step forward.

The leg buckled underneath him and he fell to his knees, using his hands to break his fall.  Shaking, he glanced up and met the Nazi’s eyes.

“I need a cane to walk,” he explained, his voice low.  “I don’t have one here.  So, unless you help me, I… I can’t follow you.”

The Nazi grimaced, then backhanded Joly in retaliation and stalked angrily from the room, slamming the door behind him.  Joly crawled back to his position against the wall and closed his eyes, trying not to think of what had just happened, but he couldn’t help it.

Suddenly, he was sobbing.  The tears spilled out hot and fast, and all the stress he had built up over the course of the whole war, all the fear and all the pain, tumbled forth. 

“Jehan,” he whispered to the wall, “my friend, I am so sorry.  Forgive me.”

When he first heard the pounding at the door, he just ignored it, assuming it was the SS coming back.  His brain, in its despair, didn’t consider the fact that the SS had keys to that door, and therefore wouldn’t need to bash it in with such force.  The SS probably wouldn’t be shouting in French, either.

“Damn it, why didn’t I ask Bahorel to come with us?” the voice cried, exasperated, punctuating each word with a bang at the door.

_Bossuet?_

“Grantaire, you try it.  Ugh, this is just my luck, I get all the way down here and then can’t get through the damn door.”

“Bossuet!” Joly cried out, relieved.

“Joly?  Oh thank God, you’re alive!  We’re going to get you out of there, I promise, just hold on…”  Both he and Grantaire furiously kicked at the door, with no luck.

“Bossuet, they’re going to kill Jehan!”

“Don’t worry, just give us one more minute…”

“Move aside, gentlemen,” Musichetta’s voice requested calmly.  Joly smiled to himself.  He had always loved her voice.  He had always loved everything about her.

Keys turned in the lock, and the door swung open.  Bossuet ran to embrace his boyfriend immediately, and Musichetta slid in next to them and made it a group hug.  Joly ushered Grantaire over as well, and they just sat there on the floor together for a while, hugging each other, until they finally separated.

“You’re bleeding,” Bossuet noticed.  Gently, he touched Joly’s lip and carefully wiped the blood away.  It looked different against the dark brown of his fingers than it did against Joly’s pale complexion.

“Are you okay?” Musichetta asked.

“No,” Joly responded, and began listing off everything that was wrong with him, when she shushed him.

“Let’s get you out of here,” she said.  “We’ll be your cane for now.  Come on.”

“Jehan…”

“It’s alright, Enjolras is going after him.  We’ll get him back.  Now come on, let’s go home.”  Then, with help, she pulled him to his feet, and she and Bossuet supported him between the two of them, each one acting like a crutch.  Slowly, the trio made their way down the hall and towards the door that would lead them home.

“What happened here?” Joly asked as they passed all the dead and wounded gestapo agents.

“The wrath of an angry god,” Grantaire replied.  When Joly looked at him wide-eyed, he explained: “All I have to say is this: don’t piss off Apollo.”

~

Jehan slumped forward, unable to sit up straight anymore.  His blood dripped onto the floor, and he watched as each new drop joined the ever-growing pool of red.  Red, to him, was a lot of things: Bahorel’s waistcoat, Enjolras’ jacket, Tuileries roses, a bright red dawn… the blood of angry men.

“Will you tell me where your friends are now?” the Nazi asked again.  “Or will we have to continue our little game from before?”

“I do desire we may be better strangers,” Jehan recited, quoting Shakespeare.

“Alright,” the Nazi sighed, taking out a sharp blade.  “We can play that game.  I can keep it up all night.  You, on the other hand… I’m not sure how much longer you are going to last.”

“Oh _please,_ ” Jehan scoffed, spitting more blood onto the floor as he did.  “I know you’re going to kill me anyway.  You hate me.  You hate everything that I am.  You want us wiped off the face of the Earth.”

“Yes,” the Nazi said.

“See, you even admit that openly.  So how can you expect me to give you anything that you want?” Jehan asked.  “I’m going to die anyway.  Telling you my friends’ names isn’t going to save my life.  You really think my last act on Earth is going to be helping out the bastards who want to kill everyone I love?”

“I wouldn’t put such faith in your friends,” the Nazi growled.  “They’re not coming to save you.  Your doctor friend in the other cell refused to help you, by the way.”

“I’m still not going to betray them,” Jehan hissed.

“Then you are of no more use to me,” the Nazi said.  His voice was ominous.

“Go ahead,” Jehan whispered.  "Kill me then." 

In the hallway outside, Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Bahorel had made it to the interrogation wing and were breaking open door after door all down the hall.  Their informant had not told them which room Jehan was in, just that he was in this section, and with each door that did not bring them to their friend, they got increasingly frustrated and frantic.  They couldn’t stop thinking about what might happen if they didn’t reach Jehan in time.

_“VIVE LA RÉSISTANCE!”_

The call rang out from behind the last door on the hall.  They recognized Jehan’s voice.  

To say that the door crashed open would be an understatement.  The door practically shattered, buckling under the force of the kick that burst it open.  It hung awkwardly, only half on its hinges, as the terrifying warrior who had kicked it marched into the room, looking for all the world like an archangel in all his fury, followed by three of his closest friends.

For a moment, everything seemed frozen as if in a tableau.  The four resistance fighters stood in the doorway, glaring toward the opposite wall.  On that wall, there was another door which led outside.  An SS officer stood in that doorway, with a gun to Jehan’s back, in the process of dragging him into the alley outside.  Both the Nazi and Jehan had stopped moving, and were staring at Enjolras.  They both looked shocked, but for completely different reasons.

Enjolras’ pistol was already out.  In a flash, he shot the Nazi execution-style before the man could even speak.  The level of anger displayed on his face in that moment would have made anyone shiver.  He was Saint-Just reincarnated, with twice the violence.  He was an Angel of Death.

He walked up and stood over the body, glaring at it.  Then, kicking it with his boot to nudge it away from him, he muttered, “throw that outside.”  Bahorel obliged.

Jehan had fallen to his knees on the floor as soon as the Nazi let go of him.  His whole body shook.  His face was swollen in several places, and there was blood still dripping from an ugly gash on his forehead.  Blood had soaked through most of his clothing as well, and it looked like he might have been stabbed a few times.  Still, he was alive.

Courfeyrac pulled out a knife and used it to cut the ropes that bound Jehan’s hands.  In the same moment, Combeferre knelt next to him and used his own jacket to clean the blood from Jehan’s face.  Jehan winced when the jacket touched his wounds, and Combeferre pulled back quickly.

“Sorry,” he whispered.  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I… I thought they were going to kill me,” Jehan said.  His voice was barely audible: it was like he had used up all of his volume shouting _Vive la Résistance._

“No way,” Enjolras insisted, kneeling next to Jehan.  “You’re one of us.  You’re not allowed to die, _mon ami._ ”

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Jehan said, looking at Enjolras.  “Don’t worry.”

“The thought never even crossed my mind,” Enjolras promised.

“We need to get out of here before more Nazis show up,” Combeferre said.  “Jehan’s in no state to fight, and we’re almost out of ammo anyway.  Let’s leave now, before they figure out we’re in here.”

Enjolras nodded.  He had also had his share of battle for the day.  He offered a hand to Jehan, and Combeferre and Courfeyrac helped Jehan stand up, but they had trouble walking as a group to the door.  Enjolras glanced at Jehan, a question in his eyes.

“I might have to carry you,” he said.

Jehan nodded.  Enjolras picked him up, careful not to touch too many of the places where he was injured, and then walked out of the building, eyes straight ahead, his entire mind focused on getting Jehan home safely.  Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Bahorel surrounded them as they walked, keeping an eye out for Nazis and protecting their friends the entire way.  They walked back to their base at Saint Honoré, where Courfeyrac had left his parents’ car.  Then, still being extremely careful, they sat Jehan in the back seat of the car and Courfeyrac drove all of them back to the Café Musain, where they had agreed to meet up with the rest of their friends.


	19. The Darkest Night

Joly sat on one of the makeshift infirmary beds that he and Combeferre had set up in the main Resistance headquarters in the Café Musain, giving medical orders to his “hospital staff,” which at the moment consisted of Bossuet, Musichetta, Grantaire, Feuilly, Marius, and Cosette.  The six of them rushed around hurriedly grabbing the materials he said he needed, and making the place look as much like a real hospital room as they could with their limited resources.  Joly wanted everything to be prepared for when the other rescue squad arrived.

After what seemed like too long, they heard a car pull up outside.  The door opened, and Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Bahorel entered the room.  Bahorel immediately sat down and popped some of his joints back into place – they had been dislocated during the battle, and he hadn’t had time to fix it yet.

“We’re going to need a hospital bed, STAT,” Combeferre ordered when he saw people in the room.  “And all the best bandages we have prepared, and penicillin, and whiskey.  Grantaire, please tell me you did not drink all the whiskey.”

“I didn’t, don’t worry,” Grantaire sighed.  “I know it’s for the infirmary.  Besides,” he muttered, taking a swig of Cabernet, “wine’s better.”

“Where is Enjolras?” Feuilly whispered.  He hardly dared to breathe for all his fear of what might have happened.  “And Jehan?”

At that moment, Enjolras walked through the open door, carrying Jehan in his arms.  Jehan had passed out on the ride back from the Saint Honoré base, and with so much blood covering his clothing, Les Amis couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive.  They stared at the sight, and the silence was so deafening, they could have heard a pin drop from the top of the Eiffel Tower, on the other side of Paris.

Joly silently pointed to an open infirmary bed.  Enjolras crossed the room and carefully lay his friend down on it. 

Combeferre was in full medic mode.  The ride back from the gestapo headquarters had given him so much determination that he didn’t know what to do with it all, so he channeled all of it into helping Jehan recover.  Adrenaline pumped through his veins, and he knew he would stay awake all night and well into the morning if that’s what it took.  He immediately set about cleaning Jehan’s wounds, calling out for the materials he needed as he went.  Someone always placed whatever he needed in his hands as soon as he said it.

Marius, Cosette, and Feuilly quickly realized that they were the only ones in the room who were not injured.  So, while Combeferre helped Jehan, they ran from person to person helping everyone else.  If they didn’t know what to do, Joly directed them from his seat on the other infirmary bed.

Feuilly found himself bandaging Enjolras’ arm where some bullets had grazed him.  Enjolras leaned back against the wall and stared at Combeferre and Jehan the entire time Feuilly was working.

“I should have gotten there sooner,” he whispered.

“You saved his life, and Joly’s,” Feuilly said, looking up at Enjolras in surprise.

“I might not have.”

“Don’t think like that,” Feuilly insisted.  “They’re safe now, and we’ve still got a lot of good medicine left from our raids.  Joly is okay.  Jehan will pull through.  I believe in that.”

Enjolras hugged Feuilly tight, not wanting to let go.  When they finally pulled apart, he wiped a single tear from his eye, then glanced back at Jehan.  Then he faced the room full of his friends.

“From now on, none of us goes anywhere alone,” he announced.  “We travel in a group.  We watch out for each other all the time, even if we don’t expect an attack.  Our enemy is everywhere, and they will stop at nothing to get to us.”   He pointed to Jehan on the bed.  “Never again will one of us have to suffer like that.”

They all nodded, hugged each other, and handed Combeferre more medical tools.  “Never again” seemed like a good rule to them.

~

As the night wore down, and Les Amis realized that it was long past curfew, they started thinking about what the recent capture of their friends meant for them as a group.  Joly insisted he would not be able to sleep in his house since the gestapo raided it, and Courfeyrac wasn’t sure his house was safe either, since Éponine had managed to climb in his window so easily the previous winter.  Combeferre wasn’t sure about his place either, since Nazi spies could have been watching Bossuet and Musichetta when they went back there.  After a while, Les Amis decided they should all just stay in the Café that night regardless, and figure out where to go in the morning.

Courfeyrac suggested they take shifts to stand watch throughout the night.  Enjolras immediately volunteered to take the first one, and everyone else except for Combeferre and Jehan eventually filtered off to bed.

Enjolras sat down at one of the café tables upstairs, looked around the darkened sanctuary, and sighed.  He had to admit he felt safer here than at his own place.  He decided it was something about having friends nearby.  Still, he felt unsettled.  The reality of everything that had happened earlier that night was beginning to sink in now, and Enjolras had to face the fact that none of his friends were really safe.

An idea came to him then, and he felt he had to act on it.  He rummaged around in the dark for a little while until he found a candle, then he found a piece of paper and a pen.  Sitting down at the café table again, he began to write.

“Enjolras?” a voice said suddenly, startling him.  He glanced up from his work and saw Feuilly standing there, blinking in the way that people do when they’re extremely tired.

“I just came to tell you your shift is over,” Feuilly said.  “I can take over now.  You should go to bed… what are you doing?”

Enjolras looked down at the papers he’d been writing on, and then back up at Feuilly.  “You know what?  Don’t worry about it,” he muttered.  He didn't want anyone to know about this particular project yet.

Feuilly walked up to the table, watching Enjolras worriedly.  Enjolras leaned on the piece of paper he’d been writing on, covering it with his arm, but Feuilly was observant and smart.  He knew his friend was hiding something.  Enjolras tried to protest, but he couldn’t protest against Feuilly.  Before he could say anything, Feuilly had moved Enjolras’ arm out of the way and picked up the paper.

“The Last Will and Testament of Jean Enjolras?”

Enjolras glanced away as Feuilly stared at him.  He couldn’t bear seeing the look in his friend’s eyes – that look of intense hurt and worry, and a little bit of fear.

“ _Mon ami_ ,” he began, hoping he could find the words to explain himself.

“You don’t need to tell me why,” Feuilly said quietly.  His voice sounded sad.  “I know.  You don’t think our chances of survival are that good.”

“ _Our_ chances?  No, Feuilly, _you_ are going to live through this.  You and Jehan have to live, even if I have to—”  He stopped just before finishing the sentence.

“Sacrifice yourself?” Feuilly whispered, filling in the sentence for him.

The silence that followed could have filled a tomb.  By not answering, Enjolras had given Feuilly all the answer he needed.

“Does anyone else know?” Feuilly asked softly.

Enjolras shook his head.  “I just thought of the idea tonight.  Besides, they wouldn’t understand.  They’d panic.”

“I think they’d understand better than you think,” Feuilly told his friend.  Then, gently taking his hand, he helped him to stand up.  “Leave that alone for right now.  You’ll have time to finish it tomorrow, if you’re that adamant.”

It took a while to convince him, but finally, Enjolras made his way back to his makeshift bedroom downstairs.  It took him a while to fall asleep.


	20. The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

The sun was barely rising over the horizon when Madame Hucheloup opened up her café for the morning customers.  As soon as he saw the café was open, Grantaire emerged from the basement room and took his favorite place at the bar.

“Drinking this early?” an accented voice asked from somewhere behind him, and Grantaire turned.  When he saw the Nazi there, he immediately turned back around to stare into his wine some more.  He really couldn’t take this today.

“Hey, it’s alright,” the Nazi said, sitting down at the bar next to him.  “I can understand this.  I had a bad night last night.”  Then he waved down Madame Hucheloup and asked for a beer.

“Yeah,” Grantaire muttered.  “Me too.”

The two of them drank in silence for a while.  Then, an idea coming to him, Grantaire spoke up.

“Have you ever tried French wine?” he asked.

“I prefer my own country,” the Nazi replied.

“Sure you do.  _Deutschland über alles_ and all that.  But really, try the wine.”  He gave the man an encouraging nod as if to promise him, one morning drinker to another, that the wine was good.

The Nazi shrugged and took a sip of Grantaire’s wine.  He agreed that it was actually very good, and the two of them started chatting animatedly about alcohol.

“Hey, Madame H!” Grantaire cried, about an hour later.  “Can we get another one of those bottles, my favorite kind?  It’s on me.”

“You are very generous,” the Nazi said.

“I’m just very drunk,” Grantaire laughed.

“If I keep up, I will not be able to stay on top of things at work today,” the Nazi muttered, slurring his speech a little bit.  Grantaire glanced at him sideways.

“Don’t go in,” he suggested casually.

“Are you kidding?  I have to.  The Drancy Operation is too important.  Brunner will kill me if I don’t show.  Then again, he’ll kill me if I show up drunk, too.”  He fell off his bar stool at that point.  Looking around and finding himself on the floor, he muttered, _“Scheisse!_   I’m dead.”

Grantaire watched the guy, wide-eyed, as he ranted drunkenly on the floor.  A million thoughts raced through his own drunken mind, but most of them revolved around one obvious question: _What in Paris is the Drancy Operation?_

“Hey now,” he reassured the drunk officer as he offered him a hand.  “I’m sure it’s not that bad.  How important could this operation be, anyway?”

“The Drancy Operation is one of the most important posts for the German army in Paris!  This is the chance of a lifetime for me!” the Nazi cried.  He seemed very upset now.  Perhaps he was an angry drunk.

“So… it’s at Drancy?  The high-rise apartments in the suburb?” Grantaire asked.  “But I thought those were evacuated years ago.” 

The Nazi muttered some things under his breath, mostly slurred statements about German military officers and the occupation of Paris.  Then he started ranting about “undesirables.”  Half of it was in German and half in his heavily accented French, but Grantaire managed to make out the word “degenerate” several times.  He remembered that word.  He wondered if maybe the Nazis were storing some more stolen artwork in the Drancy apartments.

Unfortunately, the Nazi stopped talking about Drancy right about then, and instead took to shouting some more German curse words and lamenting the fact that his commander, Herr Brunner apparently, was going to kill him.

“Hey,” Grantaire said, putting both of his hands on the man’s shoulders to steady him.  “Calm down.  Um.  I can help you.”  He had no intention of helping this Nazi, and no idea how he would help even if he’d wanted to, but he just wanted to say something to get the guy to stop shouting in German in the middle of Madame Hucheloup’s café.  It was beginning to scare the waitresses.

A wine bottle smashed over the Nazi’s head from behind, and the man fell over onto the bar.  Grantaire pushed him onto the floor.

“There,” Bahorel announced, even though the Nazi was unconscious.  “Now you can say you were ambushed by the Resistance.  That’s bound to be a valid excuse for skipping work.”

Grantaire gave Bahorel a high-five, and then offered him the rest of the Nazi’s drink.

“How are you going to pay for all of this?” Madame Hucheloup asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

“Just put it on his bill,” Bahorel said, gesturing at the unconscious Nazi.  Then he took a last swig of the beer, slammed the mug down on the table with a very satisfying thump, and threw his arm around Grantaire’s shoulders.

“Come on, R,” he said smugly, “we have to go find our other friends.”

~

When Bahorel told Enjolras the intelligence that Grantaire had gotten from the drunk Nazi, Enjolras’ eyes glinted with determination.  If it had been a better day, he might have smiled.  Instead, he simply turned to face the rest of the room with that look that said he had set his mind on something and he wasn’t going to back down until it was done.

“My friends,” he announced, “we don’t know what is at Drancy, but I say we rally the troops, march over there, launch an assault on the Nazi bastards guarding the place, and find out what exactly they’re hiding in those apartment buildings.  Who’s with me?”

They all punched the air with their fists.  Their cheer sounded almost militaristic, just a way for a group of fighters to show support of their commander’s plan.  They launched the attack because they must.  Still in the forefront of all of their minds was the fact that in the span of a week, two of their friends had been captured and another one had been killed.

Enjolras slung his favorite carbine over his shoulder and marched out the door of their shelter, and most of the rest of Les Amis followed behind him.  Jehan was still too injured to walk, so he stayed in the café basement, and Cosette stayed with him.  The others marched through the streets on their way to the apartments.

For the first time since the occupation of Paris, they didn’t care who saw them on the march.  They just wanted to give the Nazis a piece of their mind, and if they died trying, so be it.

The first Nazi who saw them actually seemed to shrink away from Enjolras’ glare.  He muttered something under his breath, but didn’t get a chance to tell anyone else about it.  A bullet from Enjolras cut his warning short before it could even begin.

 _“Engel des Todes!”_ another soldier whispered when he saw the resistance army approaching the gates of Drancy.  He began to shout it a little louder, but Bahorel seized him by the collar and punched him hard in the face.  Feuilly shot him too, just for good measure.

“What did he say?” Enjolras demanded, looking to his left where Marius marched.

“He said ‘Angel of death,’” Marius answered quietly.  “I think he might have been talking about you.”

“You have a nickname now, _mon frère_ ,” Combeferre muttered.  “The Germans know who you are.  They actually seem a little afraid of you.”

Enjolras didn’t say anything to that.  He didn’t know what to think.  Instead of thinking about that, he flipped his carbine upside down and began beating at the lock on the gate with the butt of it.  More guards came running, alerted by the sound, and Les Amis fought them off.  Finally, after what felt like ages, the lock gave way and they forced their way through the gate.

Before them stood the Drancy high-rise apartments, surrounded by a relatively small courtyard area.  Beyond the courtyard, Les Amis could see train tracks and a part of the train station building.  As they broke their way in through the gate, several Nazis poured out of the train station and ran across the courtyard towards them, yelling angrily as usual.

“Okay,” Enjolras declared, looking around the area and assessing their situation as quickly as he could.  “I need a team of fighters to stay here and hold off the guards, and another team to go inside the building and recover whatever they’ve got stored in there.  You might need to take several trips to carry it out.  While that happens, someone else needs to get us some escape cars ready for when we leave.”  He looked around at his friends, and picked out who didn’t really look ready for a fight.  “Joly, Musichetta, you do that.  I don’t care how you get them.  I’ll fight the guards.  Feuilly, you lead the other team into the building.  Alright, everyone, let’s go!”

He finished giving his orders just in time.  The Nazis fell upon them just as he finished speaking, and Enjolras took a fighting stance and cocked his gun as they charged.  Musichetta grabbed Joly’s hand and slipped away with him while the Nazis were busy fighting Enjolras, and they ran around the building to a parking lot where they could search for a car or two. 

Courfeyrac fought off two Nazis at once, while Bahorel and Bossuet stood back to back and took on as many as would come at them.  They brawled and kicked and punched and shot, and shouted war cries all the while.  Enjolras fired into the approaching horde until his carbine ran out of bullets, and then he flipped it around and began using it as a club to bludgeon them with.  Next to him, Marius also fought tooth and nail.  He thought about how these soldiers had invaded his home and killed one of his friends, and his furor rivalled that of Enjolras.  Together, they made a formidable force, and the soldiers in the courtyard had their hands full trying to deal with these five.

While they fought, Feuilly darted past them and over to the doors of the building.  Combeferre quickly followed him, and Grantaire followed suit.  He thought about the warehouse they’d raided, and how much priceless art they had found in that one, and how much larger this apartment complex was than that warehouse.  Maybe they’d find another Picasso in here, or maybe a Monet.  Whatever it was, there had to be a lot of it.

Feuilly pulled at the door to the apartment complex, but then noticed the heavy padlock on it.  He looked back at Combeferre and Grantaire, asking with his eyes if either of them had a plan.

Combeferre stepped forward and inspected the lock.  The first thing he noticed was that it looked like the same kind that had been used on the outer gate.  Enjolras had broken that lock by beating it several times with the butt of his carbine.  However, Combeferre thought he had a better idea.  He pulled a pistol out of his belt, then flipped it around and positioned it carefully so that the grip of the pistol was positioned at a particular angle against the top of the lock.  He squinted at it as he aligned everything, muttering something about “proper leverage.”  He then hit the lock hard with the pistol.  After only a few seconds, the lock broke off and fell to the ground.

Feuilly clapped him on the back.  “That was awesome!” he cried.

“That was science,” Combeferre explained.

Grantaire felt the wall for a light switch, and in a few moments, the lights flickered on.  The three Amis stood in what looked like a small lobby area of an apartment building that would be quite fashionable if it wasn’t in such disrepair.  As it was, the lights barely worked and several things looked like they were about to fall apart.  Furthermore, there was absolutely no stolen artwork to be found in the lobby.  Grantaire sighed, a little disappointed.  This looked like nothing but a boring old abandoned apartment lobby.

Grantaire began grumbling under his breath and turned around, about to leave the place behind entirely, but Combeferre put his hand on his shoulder to stop him.  “It’s just the lobby,” he said.  “We don’t know what’s in the rest of the building.”

Feuilly took point as they began to work their way through the building.  As they were walking past a kitchen area only a few minutes later, they heard a sudden crash followed by the unmistakable sound of a child crying out in pain.

The three Amis did not hesitate even for a second: they charged into the kitchen area and began searching the entire place until they found the source of the noise.  A small boy sat on the floor, holding one hand close to his chest and crying.  On the floor next to him, a glass bowl lay shattered.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Combeferre said, kneeling on the ground next to the boy, carefully avoiding the broken glass.  “You just cut yourself on the glass.  It happens.  Let me see it.”  Gently, he took the boy’s hand and inspected the wound.  “This isn’t that bad.  And you’re in luck!  I just so happen to have some bandages on me.  Just hold on, we can have this fixed up in no time.”

As Combeferre bandaged the boy’s hand, Feuilly got Grantaire to help him clean up the glass.  Within a few minutes, everything looked good as new.

“You are not Germans,” the little boy said as he watched the three of them work. 

“No,” Grantaire said.  “We’re definitely not.”

“Who are you?” the boy asked.

Feuilly smiled.  “We’re the Resistance,” he told the kid as he cleaned up the last of the glass.  In case this child didn’t know what that meant, he added, “we fight against the Germans, and anyone else who wants to hurt us.”

The little boy smiled then.  He seemed to like that idea.  Just then, however, a woman appeared in the doorway and cut their conversation short. 

“Get away from my son!” she cried, seizing a frying pan from nearby and holding it out like it was a weapon.  “Stay away!  David, come here, get behind me.”

The little boy ran over to his mother, but didn’t hide behind her like she expected him to.  Instead, he tugged on her skirt and pointed to Feuilly.

“He said they’re fighting against the Germans, _maman!_   And they helped me, look!”  He helped up his bandaged hand as proof that these three Amis were good people.

“Who are you?” the mother asked.

“The Resistance!” David cried excitedly.

She raised her eyebrows at them, and Combeferre nodded.  “He’s right,” he said.  “Our friends are outside fighting, and we came to find out what they’re keeping in this apartment complex.”  He frowned then, remembering that the door had been locked.  “How did you get in here anyway?”

David’s mom looked down at her son, and hugged him close to her.  Her eyes seemed lost in thought.  Finally, she looked back up at Combeferre and decided to answer his question.

“It’s a prison,” she whispered.  “We’re what they keep in here.”

Les Amis stared at her for a moment as her words sunk in.  From the back of the group, Grantaire gasped as he realized that the “degenerates” that Nazi had been complaining about were these people.  Not any paintings or other objects.  Human beings.

“Um, how… how many of you are there in here?” Feuilly stammered.  He had come to the same realization Grantaire had.

“Thousands,” the woman replied.  “I don’t know how many exactly.  The numbers change almost every day.”

“They… change?  How?  They bring more people in?” Feuilly asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“And take people out,” she said.  “The train station.”

Combeferre was deep in thought.  Finally, he spoke up again.  “Do you know if there is any other way into or out of this area besides the front gate and the station?”

David’s mom shook her head.  “There might be, but I don’t know of it.”

Combeferre looked back at Feuilly and Grantaire, wanting to see if they had come up with the same plan he was coming up with.  Feuilly nodded, and Grantaire didn’t see Combeferre’s glance because he was searching through the kitchen cabinets.  Combeferre looked to Feuilly for a second opinion.

“What do you think, _mon ami?”_ he muttered under his breath.  “Front gate?”

“That seems like the best option for getting everyone out,” Feuilly answered.  “Provided our friends have managed to draw enough of the guards away.  But what about Joly and Musichetta?”

“The getaway cars, that’s right!” Combeferre exclaimed.  He had almost forgotten.  “There won’t be enough room… there won’t be nearly enough room…”

“They’ll just have to take as many as they can.  But this just got a lot harder.  I really didn’t expect there to be _people_ in here.”

“What are you talking about?” David’s mom demanded.

“Oh, we’re breaking you out,” Feuilly said.

Her eyes went wide for a moment, then she frowned and shook her head sadly.  “You can’t,” she told him.  “We’ve tried.”

“We can,” Feuilly promised.  “We will.”

“But the Germans…”

“Look outside.”

She walked over to the window, almost afraid of what she would see, or maybe afraid of being seen.  In the yard, she saw the all-out brawl that still raged between the Nazis and the Amis.  Enjolras twirled his carbine around in all directions, using it as a club and knocking down Nazi after Nazi with ferocity and grace.  He seemed to be belting the words to _La Marseillaise_ as he did so.  Around him, Marius, Bahorel, Bossuet, and Courfeyrac all fought just as valiantly, like their lives depended on it.

“Go get the others,” Combeferre said quietly, after David’s mom had watched the fighting outside for long enough to realize that Les Amis could hold their own.  “We can help you sneak out a back door, and then around to the front gate while the guards are distracted.”

She immediately obliged.  Taking David’s hand, she turned and ran back out of the kitchen towards the rest of the apartment building, the places where she knew the people would be.  Feuilly followed her so he could speak to the others in case they needed convincing.  In a few minutes, they reached an incredibly over-crowded dining room full of dejected Jewish, Romani, and other imprisoned people. 

The Drancy Apartments had been built to accommodate somewhere around 700 people.  There were far more than that here.  Feuilly’s eyes widened as he took it all in.  Somehow, this seemed worse than the refugee camps at the border.  Soldiers had dragged these people out of their homes, imprisoned them in their own city for reasons none other than the fact that they were different.  For a moment, he stood there and despaired for the injustices that this war and the German army had brought.  He despaired for the fate of the human race if the Nazis should win.  Then, he closed his eyes and remembered the scene going on outside the building at that very moment.  He remembered his best friends belting the victorious French national anthem as they viciously battled, kicking more Nazi ass than they had ever kicked before.  He thought of how the Allied army was reportedly moving its way across Europe, and how those who stood for freedom and justice had friends all over the world who were standing up and fighting back.  When he thought of this, he was filled with hope once again, and he raised his fist high in the air and shouted a war cry.

_“Liberté!”_

They followed him out of the room and down the halls.  Other people from other rooms heard noise in the hallway, came out to see what was going on, and joined in.  It quickly became an enormous march of liberty towards the exit.

Combeferre and Grantaire met them at the exit.  Somehow, Grantaire had managed to find another bottle of wine.  Feuilly didn’t even stop to wonder where he’d found it, or how he managed to always have one.  He didn’t even question it.  Instead, he smiled at Grantaire and Combeferre as he led the procession of liberated people toward the doorway.

Grantaire leaned against the open door, holding it open with his body and leaving his arms free to hold the wine.  He took long swigs from the bottle as the freedom procession passed.  Combeferre slipped out ahead of them and took a position near a corner of the building, somewhere he could peer around the corner and tell the liberated people if the coast was clear for them to run for it.  Feuilly took another lookout position across the way which gave him a different vantage point.  Together, they pointed the way to the front gates and liberty.

Joly and Musichetta rolled up in two separate cars outside the gates and offered a ride to any who wanted it.  Their cars soon filled up with the elderly and the sick, and they drove off, only to return minutes later for another round.  Feuilly grinned at Combeferre from across the way.  It looked like they might actually pull this off.

“WATCH OUT!” a booming voice shouted from the front courtyard.  From the middle of a brawl with two Nazis, Bahorel had spotted a second team approaching from the other side of the building.  Feuilly, Combeferre, and a couple of the escaping refugees whirled around and threw themselves into the fight.

Soon, Bossuet appeared at their side, fighting viciously with a broken-off end of what looked like it might once have been a broom.  “I found it inside,” he explained, breathless, as he smacked a Nazi hard in the face with it.  “I ran out of bullets an eternity ago, and my gun barrel broke in half on a Nazi’s head, but hey, this works too.”

“You guys get out of here!” Marius cried.  He yelled his message at the refugees specifically.  “Les Amis and I, we can hold them.  You get to the front gate while it’s still open!”

Enjolras, Bahorel, Marius, and Courfeyrac held the front gate open.  Combeferre, Bossuet, Feuilly, and Grantaire held their own in the side battle.  Hundreds of refugees still streamed out of the building and toward the front gate, but the gap was getting narrower with every second.  Les Amis began to worry that they might not be able to get everyone out.

As another Nazi fell in front of Courfeyrac, the charismatic resistance fighter shook the hair out of his eyes and looked forward, toward the train station.  Alarmed, he noticed several more Nazis corralling some of the refugees over there and forcing them onto the trains at gunpoint.  He pointed this out to his friends as another Nazi came at him from the side, and he threw himself into another fight.

“I’m on it!” Bahorel cried, bolting toward the train station.  “Somebody else, with me, let’s take these bastards down!”

Feuilly darted after him with an almost eager look in his eye.  He felt confident that Bossuet and Combeferre were good enough fighters that they would be able to hold the line at the side of the building, and he trusted Enjolras, Marius, and Courfeyrac enough to hold the front gate open with all they had, but Bahorel would need backup if he wanted to take on a whole train station full of Nazis alone.

They took out the first few without even being noticed, but once the sound of German cursing began to fill the air, more officers started to get the hint.  Feuilly and Bahorel soon found themselves separated by the flow of the battle.  A higher-ranking officer seized Feuilly’s collar in one hand and shoved him hard against a wall, a gun to his head.

“Fight back!” Feuilly cried to the Jewish and Romani citizens in the station, even as he felt the metallic end of the gun barrel against his skin.  He fully expected to die.  He did not care.  He used what might have been his last breath to shout his call to action to the people.

“Fight back!  Vive la Résistance!” he cried.  He made eye contact with a forty-something year old Jewish man in the crowd as he said it.  For a moment, he might have imagined that the man nodded at him, ever so slightly.  Then, the man turned to his side and punched the living daylights out of the Nazi who had just forced his wife and daughter to get on the train.  They jumped off the train then, and all three of them began running for the exit.

All over the station, others began fighting back as well.  Bahorel led by example, showing people how to defend an attack and how to do actual damage with no weapons.  Someone threw something at the officer who threatened Feuilly, and suddenly there was no gun pressed to his head anymore.  He breathed a deep breath in and out, honestly astonished that he got to live to see another moment.  Then, he threw himself back into the fray with all of his force.  They had a battle to win, after all.

~

Marius had joined the battle in the side yard.  By the side of the building, he and Bossuet acted like a two-man defense force, holding off the steady flow of Nazis who came rushing at them from their nearby barracks.  They punched and kicked, and used their empty guns as clubs, and drew the attention away from the building itself.  While the battle raged, Combeferre urgently waved the continuing stream of escapees toward the exit.  He was the lookout, letting them know when the coast was clear, and he trusted Marius and Bossuet to keep the Germans off their backs.  Grantaire held the door open for them, and group after group slipped out of the gates while the two-man fighting force held back the fascist tide.

At the front gates, Enjolras and Courfeyrac had found several crates from the courtyard, and had pulled a few of them over to make a mini barricade.  It helped, and hundreds of refugees fled through the gates behind it while the two resistance leaders held off the guards.  They threw paving stones, as well as whatever else they could find that they could throw.  At one point, Enjolras even climbed on top of some of the crates and kicked several Nazis in the face when they tried to climb it.  However, they also noticed that there were not as many Nazis coming at them as there had been before.  Most of the fighting had moved to the train station area.

~

In the train station, the fighting had intensified.  Feuilly let himself be carried by the movement of the battle, and since he had thrown himself into the middle of the crowd, he went where the crowd went.  He had no real plan, except that he knew he would fight with anyone who came into his path who wore a Nazi uniform.  

However, some German reinforcements had just arrived.  Feuilly and the hundred or so people he had surrounded himself with suddenly found themselves face to face with a veritable wall of the German army, and try as they might, they couldn’t push through it.  Some people began to lose faith.  A few of them stopped fighting back.  Feuilly screamed about resistance until his lungs were hoarse, but since they were fighting mainly with their fists against an entire battalion, it did not work.  _If only we had some Molotovs,_ he thought.  Then, he and the others felt themselves being forced backwards, onto the train.

Bahorel finished the fight he’d been waging over by the wall, leapt over some German bodies on the ground, and landed on another soldier, who fell very quickly.  Then he launched himself toward the train, dodging around some of the fleeing refugees who had managed to evade the corralling.  As he ran, the train began to puff smoke into the air, and in the moments before he reached it, it began to inch its way out of the station. 

Bahorel didn’t let that stop him.  He jumped toward it, grabbed a hold of a part of the door, and held on for dear life.  Working his way along the outside of the train, he made it to the front just as the train left the station.  It began to pick up speed, and he launched himself into the front car through the driver’s window.

“What the Hell?” the driver cried when he noticed.

“ _Vive la Résistance,_ ” Bahorel said as he punched the Nazi with all the strength he had.

They brawled for a while, but Bahorel eventually won.  He slid the door open and tossed the driver out just as the train was passing through the outskirts of Paris.  It had really begun to speed along by that point, and since trains do not work like cars, he couldn’t just turn it around and go back to Paris.  Altering the destination shouldn’t be too much of a problem though, he thought.  He spent a little bit of time playing with things in the car, trying to figure out what to do.  Then, the door behind him slid open and he whirled around, fists raised.

“Easy, calm down,” Feuilly said.  “It’s me.  And I just kicked some Nazi scumbags over the edge of the caboose for you.”

“Nice!  So, what’s the headcount look like?” Bahorel asked.  “Who is on this train with us?”

“It’s the two of us, and probably at least a thousand others.  They’re mostly Jewish, Romani, gay… you know, it’s all the people that Hitler hates.”

“Of course.”

“So, where are we going?” Feuilly asked, taking a position next to Bahorel.  “Do you need a co-captain or something?  I can help you figure this out.”

Bahorel smiled.  “We’re definitely changing course,” he said.  “I think we should definitely _not_ go to Germany.  Let’s see… I hear Switzerland is nice this time of year.”  He glanced at his friend as if to ask Feuilly’s opinion of that plan.

Feuilly nodded, beaming like the sun.  “Switzerland,” he agreed.  “Let’s go.”


	21. Escape from Drancy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for all the hurt and angst.

The German reinforcements from the train station moved back over to the Drancy courtyard as soon as they saw the train leave.  Seeing the size of the battalion running at them, Enjolras quickly glanced over to where Combeferre and Grantaire held the gates open. 

“ _Mes amis!”_ he called out, grabbing their attention.  Then he gestured to the approaching German forces, his expression grave.  “We have a problem.”

“There’s too many of them,” Courfeyrac lamented.  “We can’t hold all of them off.  Especially not since we all ran out of bullets an eternity ago.”

“Are you going to retreat?” Grantaire asked.  “That’s not like you.”

“We need to make sure these people get out of here safely!” Combeferre cried.

At that moment, the next wave of Nazis hit the shipping crates that Enjolras and Courfeyrac had set up.  They toppled several crates over, and Courfeyrac rolled out of the way just in time, but the damage had been done.

“This barricade isn’t going to hold!” he cried.

Combeferre saw how exhausted Enjolras looked, standing on top of one of the crates in the yard.  He noticed how his friend’s legs shook trying to keep him standing, and how his fingers were white around the grip of his rifle, which he was still using as a club.  There was blood spattered on his face again, just like the last time they’d gotten into a fight with Nazis, and just like last time, Combeferre couldn’t tell whose blood it was.  He knew Enjolras liked putting up a strong façade in front of people, but he also knew there was only so much he could take.

“Let’s lead those who are still here to one of our sanctuaries,” Combeferre suggested.  “That way we can be absolutely sure they make it to safety.”   _And we get ourselves out of danger, too,_ he added mentally.  He didn’t feel ready to die today.

Enjolras nodded.  “And we’ll split up, so they have to divide their forces.  And then we won’t overcrowd any of our sanctuaries either.”

“Good idea,” Combeferre agreed.  A Nazi rushed at him then, and Combeferre tripped him and seized his weapons from the air without even taking his eyes off of Enjolras.  Then, in a second, he glanced at the weapon he now held.  It had half a magazine of bullets left.  He holstered his own pistol, deciding for now to use the Nazi’s gun instead, then he looked back up at Enjolras.

“You take point on this group, I’ll bring up the rear and fire off shots at the Nazis as we go, keep them from following us too closely.  Other groups can work the same way.”

Without another word, Enjolras leapt from the crate, landed on his feet, and took off running.  “Follow me!” he cried to the refugees who had begun to run in every direction.  “I know a place where you can hide and rest for the night.”

Combeferre took up the rear, like he promised he would.  Enjolras led the people on a twisting journey, taking random turns and trying all he knew how to do that would throw the army off their backs, and Combeferre fired at the Germans with their own gun until it ran out of bullets.  Grantaire ran alongside their group, almost keeping pace with Enjolras.  The three of them took their group South, back toward the center of Paris.

Meanwhile, Courfeyrac darted over to where Marius and Bossuet still battled at the side of the building.  He let them know the change of plans, and then kicked a crate over in front of some of the Nazis as he ran back to the front gate to hold it open so the last group could escape.

“Follow me!” he yelled, just like Enjolras had, rallying the rest of the refugees in the courtyard to his call.  Marius bounded to his side immediately as well, and began helping him rally the people, shouting “follow us!”  The last of the people began to group around them.  Bossuet was still engaged in the middle of a hand-to-hand fight with a Nazi, so he took up the rear like Combeferre had done for the other group. 

They were about halfway through the gate when Musichetta pulled up to the camp again, still driving the German car she had hotwired.  She pulled it around sideways so that it blocked the road behind them and rolled down the driver’s side window.  Courfeyrac ran over to fill her in on the change of plans.

“German reinforcements.  We’re wrapping up the escape, this is the last group.  Where have you been taking the others?”

“Wherever they asked me to drop them,” she replied.  “Some of them had families or friends.  Some knew safehouses that aren’t in our network.  I can take a few of these ones if you want me to.”

Two elderly Romani women climbed into the backseat of her car as she and Courfeyrac talked about the resistance.  Musichetta smiled at them through the rearview mirror and gestured for them to buckle in.

“If you see Joly on the road, signal him to turn around,” Courfeyrac told her.  “We’re done here.  Honestly, I wish we could leave more of an impact, but I didn’t bring any matches.”  He flashed a smile at Musichetta, then glanced back at the camp and the apartment building as he said it.

“Well, they’ll have a hard time following you in any case,” Musichetta said, smiling in a mischievous way.  “At least, not by car.”

He stopped and stared at her.  “You didn’t…”

“I might have sabotaged a few pieces.  Like the engines, for instance.”

Courfeyrac’s smile spread like butter and lit up his face like a sunrise lights up the world.  He beamed at Musichetta and praised her to high Heaven until she gently reminded him that they needed to get moving because the Nazis could still move on foot. 

“You’re still the best!” he cried as he rejoined Marius at the head of the group.  “Bossuet, come on, we’re moving out!”

The sound of angry German cursing began to rise from the camp as the soldiers discovered Musichetta’s sabotage.  They immediately began chasing after Courfeyrac and Marius’ group on foot, but the Amis had a head start.  They made their way West, instead of South, and they pulled the German army in two different directions.  They thought only of the next moment, the next street to turn on, the next evasion to take.  The full importance of what they had just done, and the weight of everything they had been through that day, had not fallen on them yet.  In those moments, all they wanted to do was make it back to their meeting place without losing anyone.  If they could do that, they’d be good as gold.

~

Enjolras paused in a narrow side street to take a quick break from running, and to take a head count.  He counted close to twenty refugees, all of them entirely exhausted from the run.  They leaned against each other for support, sweating through their clothes, and some of them sat down in the alleyway with their backs against the wall.  Combeferre also leaned against the wall, breathing hard, bent over almost double because of a stitch in his side.

The sky darkened with every moment, and Enjolras knew that they needed to find shelter soon.  They were about to be breaking curfew if they stayed out any longer.  The gestapo would be out looking for them too, and without any crowds to blend in with, they would be obvious, and they would be shot.  But unfortunately, they were still a long way away from the Café Musain.

Grantaire walked in a casual circle around the block while Enjolras did the head count.  He didn’t bring any attention to himself – he never did, after all – and while he walked, he simply examined the places he passed.  He stopped to look at a shop window for a moment, then moved on to look at a restaurant down the street.  He loitered for a little while around the cafés and wine shops that he found, and then he slowly began making his way back to the side street where everyone else had stopped.  From the look of concentration on Enjolras and Combeferre’s faces, they were still trying to come up with a plan for how to save the refugees.

“I know where we are,” Grantaire announced.  Enjolras looked up at him, surprised, as if he hadn’t noticed him come back.  Grantaire wondered if Enjolras had even noticed him leave in the first place.

“We’re in the 20th _arrondissement_ , on the Eastern edge of the city,” he said.  “Père Lachaise cemetery is about a half-mile to our West.”

Enjolras and Combeferre both stared at him.  “How did you know that?” Enjolras asked.

Grantaire shrugged.  “I recognized the cafés.”

Combeferre was deep in thought.  “If we’re that close to Père Lachaise, then there is a hospital nearby,” he muttered.  “I could probably get us some more medical supplies.”  He rubbed some bruises that had begun to form on his arms because of that afternoon’s battle, and he also thought about how many of the refugees might have been denied medical treatment while they were in Drancy.  He still didn’t really know about everything that had been happening in there.  A part of him didn’t want to know.

Enjolras had also sunk into thought.  He remembered all the planning sessions he had been to with members of the various Parisian resistance groups, and he remembered all the intelligence that had been carried to Les Amis’ base by runners from those other groups.  About a year ago, there had been an envelope with a map of the Père Lachaise area.  He closed his eyes and recalled it again.

When he opened his eyes, he had a plan.

“Follow me,” he said, sure of himself once more.  “I know a place nearby where we can stay.”

The section of the occupying army which had been following them seemed to have wandered off somewhere else: they could see no signs of a battalion, just the normal number of gestapo stationed around the street.  Les Amis and the twenty refugees walked in the middle of the street, surrounded by the last few stragglers of the day who were headed home.  They kept their eyes straight ahead and their weapons concealed, and the gestapo looked past them.  Sooner than anticipated, they reached the edge of the cemetery.

Enjolras turned to the South then, and began making his way around Père Lachaise that way.  The rest of them followed him, curious to see which sanctuary he knew about in this area.  However, as they were rounding the Southeast corner, he stopped suddenly.

A French police officer stood in the street, directly ahead of them, glaring them down like they were the most suspicious criminals in all of Paris.

“Good evening, Inspector,” Enjolras greeted Javert coldly.  He and this particular cop had some awkward history which involved Enjolras getting arrested at political rallies more than once.  That had all been before the German invasion, though.

“Monsieur Enjolras,” the police inspector greeted, equally cold.  “And what kind of trouble are you and your… mob… getting into today?”  He gestured to the refugees that stood behind and around Enjolras in the street.

“No trouble,” the resistance leader responded.  “We’re just going home.”

“Ah, so what kind of trouble _were_ you getting into?” Javert asked.  “Destruction of private property, perhaps?  Disturbing the peace?  Or was it something more serious than that?  Maybe you are the ones who have been murdering the army officers around here?”

Enjolras crossed his arms over his chest.  “Do you expect me to just tell you?” he asked.

“I expect you not to break the law.”

“I have a question for you, Inspector,” Grantaire said, peering out from the middle of the crowd.  He edged his way forward past a few refugee families so that he was standing right next to Enjolras at the front of the procession.  “Is it the law that you love,” he asked, “or is it justice?”

“It is both,” Javert replied. 

Combeferre lost his composure then, and stepped forward to face Javert head-on while he said his piece.

“And what if the law is unjust?” he demanded, looking Javert in the eye.  “You can’t claim to defend both the law and justice at the same time in a situation like this.  Haven’t you noticed what’s been going on around here?  The disappearances, the coverups… Paris is being occupied by an enemy force, choked to death by a tyrannical German hand.  We can’t take it.  And take these people behind me for example: do you know where we found them?  In a holding camp meant to hold 700 at most.  There were _thousands_ in there.  It’s inhumane, but it’s legal.  Is that justice?  And what about the building on the Rue de Saussaies, the Gestapo Headquarters.  Do you know what goes on in the back rooms of that place?  Enjolras and I carried our friend Jehan out of there, covered in blood….”  Tears formed in his eyes, and he swallowed hard, blinked, and continued.  “It’s all legal, by their rules.  But it is not justice.”  He took a moment to breath and remind himself that there was good in the world.

“You have to ask yourself which you really support,” Combeferre continued.  “The law, or justice.  It cannot be both.  Javert, if you hadn’t noticed, this is a war, and we are being subjected to the abhorrent laws of a fascist regime that is not our own.  This is France, and they are invaders.  Literally, they invaded us.  Are you going to forget about how many of the French army they had to kill to get in here?  Are you just going to step aside and let that happen?  Are you going to submit to their laws, and their twisted idea of _justice_ while others fight and die in the war?  This is your country too, for goodness’ sake.  It’s your home, invaded by the worst kind of person imaginable.  So, what are you going to do about it?”

Javert sighed.  He had heard the Resistance’s argument before.  But the way he saw it, he had to stay true to the law, or else what would his purpose be?  He had to defend the law, no matter what.  He had to do his job.

“You are still breaking the law,” he insisted, steadfast in his beliefs.  “First and foremost, I have reason to believe you have been carrying out attacks on military outposts around this city.  I can see those weapons in your belt, Monsieur Combeferre.  Breaking and entering also seems likely, given your story about having ‘ _found’_ these people behind you in a secure facility.  Besides that, now I know that you were the ones who invaded the Gestapo Headquarters.  They are still looking for the perpetrators of that crime.  And in five minutes, you will be breaking curfew as well.  This is quite a few laws to be breaking at once, gentlemen.”

The refugees began to mutter worriedly among themselves.  Did they just escape one prison only to fall into another one?  Enjolras, on the other hand, was not done with Javert just yet.

“Inspector,” he began, softening his voice a little and speaking to Javert as he would to any other French citizen.  “What would you do if you found us to be breaking the law?”

“I would arrest you.”

Enjolras nodded.  That’s what he had expected Javert to say.  “Now, what do you think _they_ would do if they caught us?”

Javert paused.  The pause became a drawn-out pause, which then became an extended silence.  Enjolras watched him closely the entire time.

“I’ll tell you,” he said after a while, seeing that Javert wasn’t going to answer the question.  “They would shoot us all.  Probably against that wall right there.”  He pointed to the nearby wall at the Southeastern corner of the cemetery.  It was the same wall that the defenders of the Paris Commune had been killed on, and the historical significance was not lost on Enjolras.  He knew exactly what he was insinuating: he and his friends would be seen as martyrs for the cause of liberty, the Nazis would be the villains in the story, of course, and Javert would be someone who stood by and did nothing to stop the murder from happening.

Javert saw it, too.  He glanced back and forth between Les Amis and the wall with a look on his face that made them think he was probably in the middle of a great battle with himself.  He had to reconcile his duty to defend the law with his duty to defend justice, and he couldn’t figure out how to do it.

“Uh… Inspector?” Combeferre asked, almost hesitantly.

“I should just arrest you all,” Javert muttered.

“These twenty people behind me haven’t broken any laws, though,” Enjolras argued, getting more desperate now.  “They’re just Parisian citizens like you and I.  They were wrongfully imprisoned…”

“Hey, Inspector Javert,” Grantaire said then, stepping forward and putting his arm around the cop as if they had been good friends all along.  “I have another question for you.  Where is the nearest police headquarters?”

Javert looked at him, surprised.  He had not been expecting this question.

“It’s just down that street, then you take a right, a left, and another right.  It’s an eight-minute walk from here.”

“Eight minutes?” Grantaire asked.  “But the curfew will fall in…” he checked his watch.  “Two minutes now.  Oh dear, Inspector.  You've delayed us for too long: we will have to break even more laws now.  Whatever shall we do?”

The battle that raged in Javert’s mind showed through on his face.  Just when it looked like he might be about to explode from the pressure of it all, Combeferre spoke again, his voice quiet and calm.

“If you let us go to our sanctuary in this area, we could get there before the curfew falls, and we could avoid getting caught by the wrong people.  You must admit the gestapo are an unpleasant group.  I’m willing to bet you don’t like them any more than we do.  Think of it this way: if you let us go, you will be preventing around two dozen murders.”

"You can arrest us in the morning if you really want to," Grantaire added.

Another minute passed in complete silence while Les Amis held their breaths and Javert tried to decide what his duty dictated he should do.  Finally, he exhaled strongly, and stiffly stepped aside.  They could all tell how much reluctance was in that step.

“I am keeping a watch on your place tonight, though,” he insisted.  “And in the morning, you will _all_ see the inside of the nearest jailhouse.  Believe me.”

They did believe him.  They also let him follow them to the shelter Enjolras knew of, even though they didn’t like it, because they figured that getting him to go away entirely would probably be too much of a stretch for one night.  Enjolras led them to a building near the South side of the cemetery, and ushered them all inside.  Once they were all in, he lit two lanterns, hung one of them on a hook on the wall just inside the door, and then closed the door.

“That’s yours,” he said to Javert, pointing to the lantern on the wall.  “This can be your lookout.  The rest of us are going downstairs, where we will sleep here for the night and leave again tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning, you will come with me to the prefecture of police,” Javert said.

Enjolras just nodded once in a “whatever you want” kind of way.  With that, he turned around and left Javert at the front door, leading Combeferre, Grantaire, and the twenty refugees down a nearby flight of stairs, and holding the other lantern before him like a beacon.

The stairs led them underground, to a chamber where they could see a series of tunnels stretching out before them.  The tunnel that snaked off to the left had a tricolored flag hanging on its wall, and Enjolras led the people down this tunnel.  Soon, they came to a wooden door with a handwritten sign on it which read: “Friends of the Commune, enter here.”

Inside, they found a large cavernous room with beds and fresh blankets, all set up like a secret boarding house for people fleeing from the government.  There were crates stacked against one of the walls as well, which held various supplies.  It appeared that not only had the defenders of the Commune prepared this hideaway very well, but someone else had come down here more recently and made sure things were up to date.

Enjolras got the people’s attention one last time before they all fell asleep in their newfound sanctuary.  “These tunnels go all the way to the other end of the cemetery,” he said, “and there is another exit on that side.  We’ll wake up early and go out that way, so as not to disturb our police guard.  He shouldn’t even notice we’re gone.”

With that, even though there was no one else in the tunnel except for their group and Javert, Enjolras took a seat near the door and took the first watch.  He didn’t want to leave their entire defense up to a cop who might betray them at any moment.  _Still,_ he thought as he looked at the room full of peaceful, sleeping people, _this could have gone a lot worse._

~

Across town, Courfeyrac and Marius led their group of refugees across a bridge in the center of the city, across the Seine, getting farther and farther away from Drancy with every step.  They had been ducking into side streets and hiding in the shadows of buildings ever since they left the camp, and now the sun was beginning to set.  They knew curfew would soon be upon them, and they needed to get inside.  Marius boldly led the way South, toward the Jardin du Luxembourg and the area of Paris that he knew so well.

Five soldiers dogged them relentlessly, everywhere they went.  These five had been on their tail since Drancy, and had undoubtedly become even more angry by the fact that Musichetta sabotaged their cars.  Still, Marius and Courfeyrac took as many tight turns into as many skinny passageways as they could find, trying their hardest to lose their Nazi followers.

Bossuet defended the rear end of their caravan as best he could.  Since his gun had run out of bullets in Drancy, he picked up anything from the ground that he could throw and threw it with all his force at the Nazis.  At one point, he stepped to the side and tripped one of them down a flight of stairs.  When their group passed by the Folies Bergère theatre, he hid behind a banner advertising a Josephine Baker show, and ambushed the soldiers when they passed by.  He punched, kicked, and bit, sliced at them with pieces of broken glass, then seized a gun from one of them and started using that.  He improvised his way through the defense of his friends, and laughed when he got the better of their pursuers.

However, luck does not last forever.  Bossuet had been viciously fighting the Nazis all day, and as they neared the Luxembourg, his exhaustion began to show.  He had not been sleeping well either, because of the nightmare of Joly getting arrested.  Even though Joly had been saved, Bossuet couldn't get the image out of his head.  Now, when he threw a paving stone at the Nazis, it fell short.  They still had plenty of bullets in their guns, but he had run out again.  His lungs began to plead with him to stop and give them another break, and his legs eagerly agreed.  His whole body ached with the physical exertion that came with a day-long battle.

Courfeyrac noticed that the sound of the Germans’ gunfire seemed to be getting closer, and he turned around to see what was going on at the back of the group.  He saw how much Bossuet was faltering, and gestured for Marius to stop running so he could double back and help their friend.  Marius quickly gestured for the refugees to follow him into yet another side street full of shadows, while Courfeyrac skipped around them and launched himself forward down the middle of the street, running at the Nazis with ferocity in his eyes.

As he ran, he picked up a paving stone and hurled it at the nearest Nazi.  It hit the Nazi in the forehead and he went tumbling backward.  His friend caught him as he fell, and then looked up at Courfeyrac with a vengeance.  Courfeyrac took a fighting stance right next to Bossuet, glancing sideways at his friend as he did so.  He nodded once as if to say _we’ll do this together, mon ami._

Marius peered around the corner of the street he and the others had hidden in.  When he saw Courfeyrac and Bossuet both engaged in the battle, he took a step forward, ready to join them.

“No, Marius, don’t!” Courfeyrac cried when he noticed.  “Stay with the others.  Get them out of here!  Go!  _Go!_ ”

A young girl tugged on Marius’ sleeve then, wide-eyed with worry.  She had ventured out of the shadows too when she saw him do it.  He looked down at her and saw her fear in her eyes.  “What’s going to happen?” she wanted to know.  “Did they catch up to us?  Are we going to die?”

Marius looked back and forth between this girl and his friends.  Courfeyrac still pleaded with him to run, even as he pummeled the soldiers bloody.  Looking back at the girl, Marius made up his mind.  He took her by the hand, and he ran the opposite way, away from the fight, away from Courfeyrac and Bossuet, and away from those who might kill them.

The other refugees followed him as he turned several corners, and eventually, the sounds of the fight faded into the distance.  Then, as they ran past a university, a figure suddenly appeared in the street ahead of them, and Marius cried out in surprise.

“Whoa!” Cosette cried, subconsciously throwing her hands up in defense.  “It’s okay, it’s only me.”

Marius sighed with relief and ran to embrace her in the middle of the street.  For a moment, he thought he might actually start sobbing out of pure joy.  However, the angry shouts of the fighting that seemed to be getting closer reminded him of their hurry, and he made himself pull away from Cosette.  If he had his way, he would just stand there hugging her all night.

“This is my girlfriend,” he told the refugees.  “And the woman who runs the safehouse I was taking you to.”

“It’s not much further,” Cosette promised them.  “Please, follow me.”

The rest of the people moved to follow her at once, but Marius held back.  Under his breath, he explained to her about the fight, and about how he didn’t feel right leaving his friends like that, where he couldn’t be sure if they would live.  Cosette nodded her understanding, and with her blessing, Marius turned and bolted back towards the sounds of his friends battling the Nazis.

Bullets flew mostly from the Nazis as Marius turned back into the street where he had left his friends.  One of them hit Bossuet in the chest, and he fell over, bleeding from that and a few other wounds.  Courfeyrac dodged another bullet, which grazed his arm.  He managed to land another punch on the nearest Nazi anyway.  Still, his face was twisted in pain.

Marius took all of this in and then launched himself into action.  He took advantage of the fact that they hadn’t noticed him yet, and fell backward into an alleyway.  He then followed that alleyway until it rejoined the main road, about five feet behind the enemy lines.  The three soldiers that were left standing were all focused on Courfeyrac and Bossuet, and they didn’t even notice him.  He walked up behind the nearest one, seized him, and began wrestling with him.

The Nazi started screaming in German for his friends to help him out.  One decided to help by trying to shoot Marius, which is exactly what Marius had expected him to do.  Instead of letting himself be shot, however, he turned so that the body of the Nazi he was wrestling with suddenly came in between him and the hail of bullets.  A Nazi shot another Nazi, and Marius was left holding a German corpse. 

He quickly grabbed the gun off the corpse and pointed it at the one who had fired.  Behind him, Courfeyrac had the third Nazi in a headlock.  When he passed out, Courfeyrac dumped his body on the ground with the others, whether or not they were actually dead.

“Get out of here,” Marius told the survivor, his voice low.  “Tell your leaders what happens when you mess with the French Resistance.”

The one surviving Nazi ran off quickly toward his base, and Marius dropped the gun as soon as he was gone.  He turned to look at his friends: Courfeyrac clutched his injured arm, wincing in pain, and Bossuet still lay on the ground, moaning quietly when he tried to move.

Marius helped Bossuet up and used his jacket as a bandage to keep him from bleeding out.  Then, painfully slowly, he helped him walk back to Cosette’s house on the Rue Plumet.  Courfeyrac followed close behind, trying not to leave too much of a blood trail, and eventually, they found themselves on the doorstep of the nicest safehouse in Paris.

Cosette helped carry Bossuet inside, and got enough bandages for both him and Courfeyrac.  She had just finished showing the refugees their secret rooms in the basement where they could rest and heal.

“I told them they could stay for however long they need to,” she said, “and that goes for you boys as well.  Whatever you need, we’ll find a way to get it.”

Marius managed to smile brightly at his girlfriend, despite his intense levels of worry for Bossuet’s life.  “How are you this good to people?” he asked, full of admiration for her talent and her resilience in the face of danger. 

Cosette shrugged.  “I can’t think of any other way to be.”

He hugged her again, this time more intimately, and he waited longer before letting go.  “Cosette,” he whispered.  “Cosette, Cosette… tell me we are going to be okay.”

She hugged him back, tenderly and lovingly.  Her lips were right next to his ear as she whispered, “we are going to be okay.”


	22. Cosette

The refugees stayed with them for almost a week.  Each day, Cosette would make a casual walk around the block and report back how many soldiers she saw.  Each day for that week, Valjean shook his head when she gave him the number.  Too many soldiers, he said.  The house was still being watched. 

She had set up two separate rooms for Bossuet and Jehan to stay in while they recovered, and she had transported Jehan to her house from the Café Musain in person.  Gavroche snuck in through the back door regularly to bring them all food and medicine.  Joly and Musichetta moved in with them for a little while so they could help Bossuet as he tried to recover from his chest wound.  The refugees moved around the house as quietly as possible, if at all, avoiding any windows with open curtains so as not to be seen.  Cosette, Valjean, and Marius were the only ones who ever dared to use the front door.

Finally, when Cosette returned from her daily walk around the block and reported the number of soldiers she had seen, Valjean nodded.  That was a manageable number.  He could manage to sneak a few refugees out of the house today.  He took them North to Calais in small groups, where a British ally would meet them and escort the refugees across the Channel and into England.  Before he left the house, he kissed Cosette on the forehead and promised he would be back in a few days’ time.  She would watch the house while he was gone.

It wasn’t so bad now that she had company, she thought.  She was able to chat with Marius as he helped her fold laundry, for example, and she had made friends with some of the refugee children who darted in and out of the room as she worked.  In the afternoons, she would check in on Bossuet and Jehan and ask Joly if there was anything else he needed.  In the evenings, she sat with the refugees in the basement as they exchanged stories and sang songs of hope and love.  Some of them even taught her prayers in Hebrew and she began to say those to herself when she was alone.

She tried not to feel saddened as their number dwindled.  She knew it meant that more of them had been able to escape to England with the help of her adopted father, but she couldn’t help but worry about them.  She worried about whether they would make it across the Channel safely, and what would happen to them in England.  Still, one day, she waved goodbye to the last of them as they walked off with Valjean, on their way to what would hopefully be a better life.

A week passed, then another.  One day, Gavroche brought her news of another group of refugees hiding in a district nearby, and the cycle started all over again.  She would do it as many times as she had to.  She cared too deeply about the people of the world to be able to do anything else.

To prepare the house for this new group, Cosette worked all day.  She searched every closet in her house to find as many sets of bedsheets and blankets as possible, then she spent all morning washing and ironing them all.  She washed, ironed, and folded extra sets of clothing and stashed them in the basement as well.  Then she spent the entire afternoon cooking enough food for everyone, making neat little baskets full of the essential supplies, and then cleaning up after herself in the kitchen.  There were times when Marius helped, but he had been dashing in and out on errands for Les Amis as well, so there were also long stretches of time when she worked alone.

Now, as the sunlight dimmed, she turned on a small light in the basement and let her mind wander as she made the beds for her guests.

It didn’t seem like that long ago that she was making beds for a different set of guests in a different town, under much different circumstances.  As she watched her hands fold each piece of cloth just so, she could remember her younger hands doing the same task.  But her hands then had been covered in bruises from Madame Thénardier, whereas now they were soft, clean, and unblemished.

Little Cosette had assumed she would be with the Thénardiers until she died.  They told her she didn’t have anywhere else to go, or anyone who wanted her.  So she stayed, and she did every menial task they set her to, and she endured every abuse they heaped upon her.  She had assumed that one day, they would kill her.

“Your mother was one of the worst kinds,” they told her.  “Like a rat, or a plague.  She was a criminal, and you’ll be no better.  You should consider yourself lucky we were stupid enough to take you in.  Not everyone would have.”

She wondered who her mother had really been.  She knew now, of course, that the Thénardiers had been lying.  She knew them for the exploitative human traffickers that they were.  They took advantage of the suffering and used people for money.  Not even their own family was sacred.  She felt a stab of remorse for Éponine. 

“Still there, Cosette?”

Gasping, she jumped at the sound, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw who it was.

“You’ve been hard at work for hours,” Jean Valjean observed.  “Take a break.  You need it.  You deserve it.  The beds will still be here when you’re done.”

His voice was kind.  She smiled, but kept working.  The smile was full of remembrance.  

He seemed to notice how pensive she was.  Quietly, he walked over and gestured for her to sit down on one of the nearest beds.  He put his arm around her in comfort, like a father should.

“What is it?” he asked softly.

Cosette leaned her head against his shoulder.  “I was just thinking about the Thénardiers again,” she admitted after a while, “and about my mother.”

“Your mother was a wonderful, virtuous woman,” he told her.  “She gave her life to save yours.”

Cosette was silent for a while.  Then, very quietly, she whispered, “tell me the story.”

Valjean looked at Cosette and saw Fantine.  He remembered her clearly, as if it had only been yesterday that he had met her.  If he closed his eyes, he could still see the walls around them. 

For Valjean, it was a prison – he was supposed to have been released long ago, but since he’d tried to escape too many times for the government’s taste, they continually increased his time.  He had been there for several years already when they caught Fantine prostituting herself along the Southern border.  There were a lot of troops down there because of all the Spanish refugees pouring in.  Fantine had hoped the officers might be able to pay her well.

She hadn’t been there long before she became noticeably ill.  She was several shades paler than she’d been when Valjean had met her on her first day, and several pounds lighter as well.  Some of the others whispered that they’d seen her coughing up blood when she thought no one was looking.

This poor woman reminded him of too many others he had known, and it took him a surprisingly short time to make up his mind.  Gently, he approached her one day, kneeling down beside her as she crouched in the mud.

“Fantine,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one else was listening.  “Listen, I want to help you.”  She glanced at him, silent.  “I’m breaking out of here tomorrow night, and I’ve got room for one more,” he said.

“One more?”  Her voice croaked – he supposed she’d been coughing more often than talking.  Most of the others had been avoiding her.

“I’m offering you a chance to come along.”

“Why?” she asked. 

He paused.  “Don’t… don’t you want to be free?”

“I don’t…”  Cough.  “I don’t know you, monsieur.  They said in this world it’s every man for himself.  Why are you helping me?”

Valjean thought about it for a while.  The truth was that he thought he knew her.  He knew so many like her.  She reminded him of his mother, his sister, the girls from his village… she reminded him of too many people.  And then, there were the rumors the others spread about her…

“They say you have a child somewhere,” he said finally.

At the mention of her child, her entire expression changed.  He could tell the rumors were true as soon as he saw her face – the depth of her love for her child was clear in her eyes. 

“Come on,” he offered.  “I’ll let you stay with me tonight.  It’s no more than a shack really, but at least you’ll be out of the weather.  Then tomorrow, we’ll escape.  Tomorrow, you can see your child again.”

She died that night.  Hope does wonders for the human soul, but it cannot cure tuberculosis.  With her last breaths, she whispered to Valjean how to find her daughter.

“I promised her I’d take care of you,” he told Cosette, the reminiscence over.  The girl’s eyes were wide as she listened to his story.  “I promised your mother I would raise you well.”

“You have,” Cosette assured him, and kissed him lightly on the cheek to prove she meant it.  “You’ve done a wonderful job.”

“It’s important for you to remember who your mother was,” Valjean told her.  “And whatever they told you about her was a lie.”  He said “they” like it was something hateful, and he didn’t have to say their names for Cosette to know who he meant.

Cosette nodded.  She knew.  Then, glancing at the clock on the wall, she stood up and smoothed the sheets on the nearest bed, unable to keep herself from working for very long. 

“She would approve of what we are doing here, wouldn’t she?” she asked Valjean quietly.  He smiled that kind, fatherly smile that she always liked.

“Oh yes,” he said, genuinely certain.  “Yes, I think she would.”


	23. The Realities of War

While the rest of Les Amis evaded the gestapo in Paris, and while Jean Valjean quietly escorted several of the refugees North to England, Bahorel and Feuilly made their way East.  Their train made good headway, skirted the German border, and they rolled into Lausanne, Switzerland with high spirits.  Feuilly hummed the _Internationale_ as he and Bahorel opened all the doors and disembarked among a crowd of liberated people.  A train station employee stared at them in awe as the crowd celebrated their escape from occupied Paris.

Some representatives from the local government in Lausanne approached them in the middle of their celebrations to find out their story.  Upon hearing about the internment camp, the Swiss representatives promptly decided to let the refugees stay in their district and set about getting people residential permits and finding them places to stay.  Feuilly and Bahorel decided to spend a little time in Lausanne just to make sure things went okay.

They were eating lunch in a café on the edge of Lake Geneva when the woman found them.  She smiled slyly as she walked up and leaned on their table, looking at the both of them like she knew a secret that they didn’t know, but should.

“My contact tells me you boys are Parisian,” she said as they stared at her, trying to figure out if they’d seen her before.  “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that story everyone’s buzzing about, would you?  The one with the thousand refugees, and the daring escape from occupied Paris?”

Feuilly shook his head.  “Haven’t heard about it,” he told her.

“We’ve been in Lausanne for months,” Bahorel lied.

The woman sighed.  “That’s a shame.  Because you really do match the description of those two Frenchmen from the story.  The ones they say were driving the stolen German train.  The ones they say are most likely with the Resistance.”

She glanced back and forth between them to gauge their reaction to her tale.  Bahorel had his poker face on, but Feuilly looked a little worried.  If she knew who they were, then who else knew?  Also, who was this woman anyway?

“It’s a real shame,” she continued in a whisper, “because if you _were_ them, I’d have some important information for you.”

Bahorel and Feuilly remained silent.  Bahorel even shook his head.  Since they didn’t know her, they didn’t want to risk letting anything slip.

“Good,” she said after a while, when it became obvious that they weren’t going to give themselves away that easily.  “I can see why you boys have stayed alive for so long now.  Our line of work has a pretty high turnover rate.”

As she talked, she took a small handheld mirror out of her purse and began checking her reflection in it.  To passersby, she seemed to be just checking her makeup.  However, Bahorel and Feuilly noticed the design on the back of her mirror, which was almost obscured by her hand, but which could just barely be seen through her fingers.  The Cross of Lorraine.  Chosen as the symbol of the Resistance by Charles de Gaulle.

“If you want my help, come find me at the theater,” she whispered, snapping the mirror shut.  “Ask for Nora.”  And then she walked away, leaving them to stare at each other in disbelief.

They both whole-heartedly agreed that whoever she was, they needed to know what she knew, and so they made up their minds to find this theater and the mysterious Nora as soon as they could.

~

In Paris, Bossuet’s condition grew worse with each passing day, and eventually, it became all too obvious that they needed to get him to a real hospital, or it might be too late.  Joly paced back and forth across the small upstairs bedroom on the Rue Plumet, fretting nervously.  The sound of the door opening made him gasp and jump about a foot in the air.

Enjolras stood there, looking graver than any of his friends had ever seen him.  In his hands, he held a small box, which he passed to Joly.  Joly opened it and saw only a few bottles of penicillin and some whiskey.  He looked back up at Enjolras, concerned.

“This is all you could get?”

“The penicillin is from Combeferre,” Enjolras explained.  “He got it from the hospital where he works, apparently by explaining to some of the doctors that he needed it for a friend.  The whiskey is what Courf and Marius and I managed to take in our latest raid on the outposts around town.”  His lips pursed in a tight, thin line which told Joly exactly how unhappy he was with this particular haul.

Joly hesitated for a moment, then admitted what he was thinking out loud.  “This isn’t enough,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible.  He wanted to let Enjolras know, but he also didn’t want to alarm Bossuet, who had begun to stir a little in the bed behind him.

“I know,” Enjolras whispered.  “But it’s all there is for us now.  The raid went worse than anticipated.  The three of us did our best, but… we really need Bahorel on missions like that.”

Joly looked at the floor.  None of the Amis had wanted to talk much about Bahorel and Feuilly’s disappearance lately, but as the days went by without any word from them, it became harder and harder to ignore what must have happened.

A soft knock on the door came, then, and Combeferre entered the room holding some fresh bandages and looking just as upset as Enjolras was.  Still, like Enjolras, he put on a brave face and didn’t let the worst of his despair through.  Bossuet needed his help, after all.

He and Joly immediately set about cleaning Bossuet’s chest wound and changing the bandages.  They talked quietly to each other about how the penicillin Combeferre had managed to get would at least help fight off infection.  In even lower voices, they talked about what options they had left.

“Can we take him to the hospital?” Joly whispered.  “Is it safe for him there?  There has to be something…”

Combeferre shook his head sadly.  “There are too many patrols,” he replied, “and someone would ask awkward questions about who shot him and what he was doing.  It would lead back to us, and it would end badly.  Like what almost happened with Jehan.”

Joly bit his lip.  That was unacceptable, and they all knew it.

In the doorway, Enjolras stood still as a statue.  Musichetta brushed past him and hurried to Bossuet’s bedside.  Grantaire followed her into the room, but stopped in the doorway and leaned against the frame opposite from Enjolras.  He crossed his arms over his chest and tried his hardest to look like he wasn’t about to cry.  Enjolras seemed not to see him. 

Enjolras’ mind raced with memories.  He remembered Bossuet getting shot during the raid on the art museum, and how that had terrified him.  He remembered how Joly had practically given life and limb to bring Bossuet back from the brink of death that time.  He thought about how unlikely it was that a person could get that lucky twice.  Then, as he tried to push the negative memories about Bossuet’s injuries out of his mind, new ones appeared behind them.  Feuilly at the art museum, determined to save as much as he could.  He and Bahorel taking out the Nazi guards around the museum.  Feuilly pushing a Nazi out of the guard tower.  That time in the Musain when he and Bahorel had sat together at the table in the corner and plotted their guerrilla resistance to the Nazi regime.  The first day of occupation, when he had gotten himself beaten within an inch of his life just to save Feuilly from the Germans. 

Above all, he remembered a promise he had made forever ago.  “Feuilly, you are going to live through this,” he had said.  Now, it looked like he had failed in that promise.  He didn’t know what to do with himself.  Tears began to form behind his eyes as he thought about the possibility that his friends were…

_No.  They can’t be dead._

“You know, we didn’t actually see them die,” Courfeyrac’s voice said from somewhere in the room.  Apparently, the other Amis had been talking about this as well.  “We didn’t see their bodies.  We haven’t been able to find them, but that doesn’t mean they’re _gone…_ ”

“We haven’t been able to go back for their bodies because it’s too dangerous for us to try to storm Drancy again,” Combeferre pointed out.

“Can you all stop saying the word ‘bodies?’” Joly asked as he gave Bossuet some penicillin.  “Please?”

“Sorry, Joly.”

“But really, they might be alive somewhere,” Courfeyrac insisted.  “They could be hiding in Paris, even.  We don’t know.”

“Where in Paris could they be hiding?” Grantaire asked.  “We know all the Resistance strongholds, and we haven’t had any hints that they’re there.  Besides, it’s been almost two weeks.  Wouldn’t they have made their way here by now if they were in Paris?”

“So, maybe they’re hiding in one of the surrounding towns,” Courfeyrac said.  He saw it as his sworn duty to come up with positive solutions to the problems that plagued his friends.

“That’s true,” Combeferre agreed.  “There is Resistance in those towns, too, and Bahorel and Feuilly both know how to find it.”

“Exactly!  Thank you!” Courfeyrac exclaimed, happy to see someone else helping him out now.

Grantaire sighed.  He wasn’t buying the overly optimistic views.  He had seen the train leave Drancy station, and he had heard the testimony of the people they’d liberated.  Those trains didn’t ever come back with the same passengers on board.

“If they’re alive, they’re not in Paris,” Grantaire muttered.  “I don’t even think they’re in France.”

The other Amis turned to look at him.  Some of them begged him with their eyes not to say anything too depressing.  Others of them just looked tired, like they had the same suspicions he had and they knew what he was about to say, but they didn’t like it.

“What are you saying, R?” Joly asked hesitantly.  “Are… are you saying they’re…”

“Wait, NO,” Enjolras insisted all of a sudden as he realized what Grantaire was trying to imply.  He used the loud, commanding voice he usually reserved for battles and tactical sessions.  He didn’t mind his friends speculating about where Bahorel and Feuilly could be, but Grantaire went too far.  “No.  We are not talking about this,” he demanded.

“I’m just saying, we saw them run into a Nazi-occupied train station screaming _Vive la Résistance,_ and we haven’t seen them since,” Grantaire continued, ignoring Enjolras’ order.  “They’re either dead, or they were on that train that we saw leave.”

“Grantaire.  Stop talking.  Now.”

“Of course, I should have known you wouldn’t listen to me.  You never do.  Especially not when I’m telling you the truth.”

“Grantaire, I mean it.”

“You’re too idealistic, _Apollo_ , you never actually recognize the possibility that this could end terribly for all of us!”

“Our friends are alive somewhere, they have to be!” Enjolras cried.

“Yeah,” Grantaire shouted back.  “In Germany!”

“DON’T.  SAY.  THAT.”

The two stood there in the doorway with their arms crossed, staring each other down like they were determined to do this until the end of the world.  Both of them refused to budge, and neither of them moved a muscle.  The face-off lasted until Musichetta finally got sick of it, and decided to speak up.

“Can you two please stop that, for the love of God!” she cried.  “Bossuet doesn’t have much longer, and all you two can do is argue at his bedside?”

Enjolras looked ashamed and gave her his sincerest apology.  Grantaire just looked at the floor.  When Enjolras quietly left the room, Grantaire walked further inward, going to stand right next to Bossuet’s bed.  The two of them talked in low voices about Paris, romance, and the things that made them laugh.  They stayed that way until Bossuet fell asleep again, and Joly made everyone leave the room.

In a downstairs parlor room, Enjolras sat down hard on one of the sofas the house on Rue Plumet had.  He sunk into it a few inches: Cosette liked extra cushioned furniture, which was entirely her right.  Enjolras sat there, half-buried in the sofa pillows, his head in his hands, and let himself cry.  The tears felt hot on his cheeks, and for once, he just let them pour, not caring about what anyone who might see him would say. 

~

As it turned out, Nora worked for MI6, the British intelligence organization.  She told Bahorel and Feuilly that although Switzerland was neutral ground, it was not completely free of fascists, and she also hinted that some enemy agents had caught on to their presence there.  She offered them passage into Britain, or perhaps Belgium, or wherever they wanted to go.  The two of them exchanged a glance, and gave her their answer in unison:

“Paris.”

Nora raised her eyebrows.  “Really?  You want to march back into occupied territory?”

They nodded, so she shrugged and agreed to take them there.  The very next morning, before the sun rose, Nora, Bahorel, and Feuilly were in a car headed back into France.

It took them several hours longer than it should have, because they had to keep pulling over to avoid German patrols, but they eventually made it back to the City of Light.  Nora dropped them off at a street corner in Les Halles, then immediately turned around and headed off: back to Switzerland, they guessed. 

Bahorel and Feuilly walked to the Café Musain from Les Halles, but to their surprise, they didn’t find any of their friends there.  Madame Hucheloup just shrugged when they asked where Les Amis were, and, getting more confused by the second, they decided to just check the back room anyway, just to be sure.

The back room was empty: eerily so.  In fact, it was so empty that they could almost feel the silence looming over them as if in a tomb.  They stared around at the walls, which had not been touched, and the tables and chairs, which still sat in their normal positions.  Nothing looked out of place, and it didn’t look like there had been any battles here.  Besides, if this area was compromised, Madame H would have told them so.  So where were Les Amis?

Just then, Feuilly noticed a folded piece of paper sitting on the table.  One corner of it was stuck underneath a vase of yellow flowers to keep it from blowing away, but the rest of it sat on the table as if it was its own decoration.  It had been folded into the shape of a six-pointed star.  Gently, he took it and unfolded it.  It looked so much like it was supposed to be a message for him, so he opened it hoping it actually was one.

It was.  When he turned the unfolded paper over, he found small writing on the back in a very neat script.

_To F & B, if you are reading this: We’re glad you found your way back to the Musain.  We’re sorry none of us could be there to meet you.  We’re all at Ursula’s.  Bossuet is having trouble, and we’ve all been in hiding for the past few weeks, as we assume you have, too.  If you can, please come find us.  We hope to see you alive and well.  Your faithful friend, Félix._

_P.S: Thank you for teaching me how to fold paper like this._

Feuilly recognized Courfeyrac’s _nom de guerre_ on the signature, and smiled.  It felt good to know that their friends had not given up on them.  It also let him know for sure that he and Bahorel had not been the only ones to escape Drancy.  Immediately after reading the message, he passed it to Bahorel so he could read it, too.

“Who’s Ursula?” Bahorel asked as his eyes quickly scanned the page. 

“It’s Cosette’s _nom de guerre,_ ” Feuilly told him. 

“Why Ursula, though?”

“I think it’s something about how Marius once thought that was her actual name for a while?  I’m not sure,” Feuilly answered.  “Anyway, we know where she lives.  Let’s go.”

They headed back out, blending in with the crowds as they walked to the house on the Rue Plumet.  Madame Hucheloup watched them go, and shook her head slowly as she put some bottles away.

~

The house on Rue Plumet looked nothing like they had ever seen it before.  Black curtains hung on all the windows, and slow, solemn piano music could be heard coming from inside.  Musichetta’s voice sang a lament about fallen heroes, and on a lower octave, Joly lamented as well.

Bossuet had died in his sleep the night before.  Combeferre, Joly, and the few medical supplies they had managed to scrounge together had not been enough to save him in the end.

Bahorel knocked on the door.  Cosette answered it, and gasped when she saw the two missing Amis standing on her front porch.  Collecting herself quickly, she ushered them inside and checked the street outside for anyone who might be watching the house.  Not seeing anyone, she closed the door and double-bolted it.

“Bossuet?” Feuilly asked, hesitant to say it out loud.  He remembered the note that said Bossuet wasn’t doing well, and Musichetta’s song sounded too much like a funeral dirge for his liking.

Cosette sadly shook her head.  Feuilly looked shocked.  Bahorel discreetly wiped away a tear, and then cleared his throat.

“Um.  When…”

“Last night,” Cosette told them both.  Feuilly looked down at his shoes, and Bahorel cursed under his breath.  They could have been back before then.  They shouldn’t have waited so long in Switzerland.

“But you two, alive!” Cosette cried, looking at them like they were angels sent from Heaven.  “So, there is some good news at last, thank God.  Follow me.”  And she practically ran into the parlor.

Marius stopped playing the piano as soon as he noticed them standing there in the doorway.  His hands dropped off the keys like wet noodles and he couldn’t help but stare at his friends who seemed to have just come back to life.  Joly and Musichetta stopped singing to stare as well, not believing their eyes.  Jehan stared at them from the couch.  Combeferre got up and walked over to them in a daze, desperately wanting to believe they were real, and Gavroche, who had been sitting on his lap, also walked over.  Courfeyrac’s face broke into a smile when he saw them, and his entire expression said “I knew you’d come back.”  From the other side of the room, Grantaire’s jaw dropped and his wine bottle actually fell out of his hand and onto the floor.

Combeferre touched Feuilly’s face with his hand, and then Bahorel’s.  Then, Courfeyrac slipped forward and hugged the both of them so tight you’d think the world was ending.

“You survived?” Combeferre whispered as he continued to stare at them.  They nodded.

_“How?”_

Bahorel knelt down to pick up Gavroche, who had taken hold of his hand and begun examining it for bullet holes.  He ruffled the urchin boy’s hair a little bit before turning back to Combeferre.  “I’d love to tell you that story.  You guys aren’t gonna believe it.”

Feuilly glanced around the room, making eye contact with everyone and mentally counting his friends.  “Where’s Enjolras?” he asked after taking in the entire scene.

Combeferre looked sad.  “He’s upstairs,” he told them.  “We can’t get him to come down.”

“Third door on the right,” Courfeyrac added, giving Feuilly a meaningful look.  Feuilly understood immediately, nodded, turned, and left the room.

~

Someone had written “Do Not Disturb” on a sign pasted onto that door, but Feuilly trusted Courfeyrac’s intuition more than the sign.  Very gently, not really knowing what to expect, he knocked on the door.

“Please go away,” a weary voice came from inside the room.  He sounded exhausted.

“Enjolras?” Feuilly asked softly.

The voice from inside the room didn’t come again.  For a moment, Feuilly wasn’t sure anyone had heard him.  He briefly considered knocking again.  Then, the door opened and Enjolras stood there, his eyes bloodshot and his hair disheveled.  It looked like he’d been wearing the same clothes for the past few days at least, and also like he hadn't been sleeping much.  On the ground behind him lay several torn-up maps and scattered markers, like he had been trying to come up with a new battle strategy and failed.

“Am I losing my mind now?” he asked after a moment of silence.

“No,” Feuilly said.  “It’s really me.”

“I promised I’d protect you.”

“I’m fine,” Feuilly assured him.

“Bahorel?”

“He’s fine, too.  He’s downstairs.”

Enjolras fell silent again for a moment as he thought about everything that had happened in the past few weeks.  Feuilly watched him, not knowing what else to say.

“Bossuet is dead,” Enjolras said after a while.

Feuilly nodded sadly.  “And Éponine.”

“And Jehan and Joly almost died.  I thought you and Bahorel were dead.  Our friends are being picked off one by one,” Enjolras lamented.  “And there’s no sign that the war will end any time soon.  We barely have enough people left to do raids anymore, and every week, I hear that the leaders of another resistance cell have been executed.”  He looked his friend in the eye.  _“Mon frère,”_ he whispered.  “I think we might be losing this fight.”

Behind Enjolras, there was a radio sitting against the wall.  Feuilly strode over to it, then turned the volume up so he could hear.  An announcer from somewhere in the United Kingdom was reading a report about a German incursion into Italy.  Apparently, the fascists had gotten upset at the failure of their accomplices, so some of Hitler’s troops had broken Mussolini out of an Italian jail and also taken over Rome while they were at it.  The radio announcer explained that while Southern Italy had surrendered to the Allies, everything to the North of Rome was still very much an Axis power.

“So, Rome fell again,” Enjolras muttered as he listened to the report.  “They just erased the hard work and sacrifice of the Italian resistance fighters.  They continue to bounce back, after everything we try.”  He punched a wall.  _“Fuck.”_

“Hey,” Feuilly said, taking Enjolras by the shoulders and looking him solidly in the eye.  He didn’t care that he had never heard Enjolras curse like that, or that he had never seen him this close to a breaking point.  The past few years had been a dark time for everyone, and the past few months especially so.  Right now, all he wanted to do was reassure his friend and role model that not all hope was lost, after all.

“They’re saying Jean Moulin is dead, too,” Enjolras whispered.  “They’re saying he was killed.  The hero of the Resistance, gone…”

“Hey,” Feuilly said again.  “Yeah, it’s bad.  But a great resistance fighter once told me that when things get bad, that’s when resistance is crucial.  In the darkest of hours, that’s when resistance blossoms.  Do you remember?  You said we must show them that France does not fall easily.  We must show them…”

“… What the people of this country are capable of.”  When Enjolras finished the sentence, he looked back at Feuilly with a new determination.  If they stepped back even a little bit, just because they had suffered some losses, they really would lose.  They couldn’t afford to step back, then.  If they did that, all their friends’ sacrifices would be for nothing.  That fate was unacceptable.

Together, Enjolras and Feuilly walked downstairs to rejoin the rest of their friends in Cosette’s parlor.  Everyone looked up when they entered, and Bahorel paused his story when he noticed who it was.

“ _Amis,_ ” Enjolras began, pleased to hear that his voice still sounded commanding enough to get the room’s attention.  “We’ve had some losses lately.  Pretty bad losses.  I know we’re all feeling beaten… I know I am.  But we cannot let this be the end of our fight.  We lost some good friends, but we cannot let that stop us.  They would want us to fight on.”  He looked across the room, and saw Joly and Musichetta nodding at him, so he continued. 

“I think it’s time we show the Germans exactly what we mean when we say they can’t kill the Resistance,” he announced, getting more passionate as he imagined it.  “I think it’s time we take back the streets.  Let’s unite with those remaining underground groups in Paris, and let’s coordinate something the likes of which the Germans in this city have never seen.  Let’s show them what happens when they step on our throats one too many times!”

Courfeyrac nudged Marius, who still sat on the piano bench.  “Play La Marseillaise,” he whispered as Enjolras spoke.  

“To arms, citizens!” Enjolras and Feuilly cried together as Marius provided them with the perfect background music.  _“Vive la France!”_


	24. Allons, Enfants de la Patrie

As the fall of 1943 turned into winter, Les Amis threw themselves back into the fight with all their strength.  They spent day after day and night after night running errands all over Paris, and even into the surrounding countryside at times, reconnecting with the other resistance groups they had lost contact with over the past few months and tracking down their oldest allies.  Unfortunately, it meant that they uncovered several executions that had been carried out in private, and on more than one occasion, they found that an entire resistance cell had been wiped out. 

Jehan restarted _La France Libre_ , their underground newspaper, and kept it running again just like he had been doing before.  He didn’t feel quite ready to jump back into battle yet, but writing essays was something he could manage.  Starting the paper up again also let the citizens of France know that even though things had gotten far worse than anyone could have imagined, the Resistance had not died.  The first issue was called “We Fight On,” and Jehan filled it with tales of heroism from various aspects of the movement, accented by bold calls to action.  All of Les Amis helped to distribute the papers in secret, and they all took turns running dispatches back and forth to the other resistance groups that still existed.  They all promised not to let anyone slip out of touch again: they were in this together, and they were in it to the end.

In January of 1944, one of their contacts from the Drancy escape got back in touch with them.  She said she had a cousin who lived in Rouen, in Normandy, who said the Germans were working on building a wall around the coast.  They called it the Atlantic Wall, and they had been forcing people to work on it for the past two years at least.  With that knowledge, Les Amis urged their contacts on the Atlantic coast to sabotage construction of the wall in whatever way they could, and Jehan made sure to publish several stories about it so that the people would know it was possible to fight back.

It was May by the time they heard of the Allies’ plan.

“The Allies are invading where?” Enjolras asked when Marius brought him the dispatch from their friends on the West coast.

“Normandy,” Marius repeated.

Enjolras stared at the map of France on the wall as he tried to picture it.  In his mind’s eye, he could almost see teams of soldiers from several different armies landing on the beaches of Normandy.  Would they come by ship?  Parachute in by plane?  He didn’t know.  He just pictured them working their way inland after they landed.

“They’ll come here after they fight past the Atlantic Wall,” he whispered.  He could see their tactics as if it was clear as day.

Next to him, Combeferre nodded.  “Normandy is just the first step of a master plan,” he agreed.  “They’re trying to liberate Paris.”

Enjolras looked at his friends with a determined look that Les Amis had come to recognize as the look he got when he had a plan.  "The time is now," he said, the determination filling his voice.  “Rally the people.  We’re going to let everyone know that the Allies are on their way here, and then we’re going to take Paris back, or we’re going to die trying.”

“Take Paris back,” Bahorel repeated.  “So, does that mean…”

“Yes,” Enjolras nodded.  For the first time in a long time, his lips turned up in a smile.  “I think it’s finally time to build our barricades.”

~

On the morning of June 6th, Feuilly radioed their contacts in Normandy, and confirmed that the Allies had landed there.  An intense battle was raging on the beach, he said.  Hearing this, Enjolras seized his carbine and rushed out the door, brandishing it high and screaming for the people to join him in the final battle for their liberty.

Feuilly followed close behind him, leaving the radio behind in the apartment.  On their way out of Enjolras’ building, Feuilly rapped quickly on the door to Combeferre’s apartment and shouted “It’s happening now!” before bounding down the stairs two at a time to follow Enjolras into the streets.  Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Jehan appeared in the hallway and followed them.

When they reached Les Halles, Bahorel, Joly, Musichetta, and Grantaire poured out of a café and joined them, and Gavroche jumped down from the railing of a nearby building, cheering like his favorite team had just won something big.  Bahorel caught him when he jumped, and sat the adorable little sparrow on his shoulders, so that Gavroche could actually see above the heads of everyone else in the street.

“To the barricades!” Bahorel bellowed.

“Yippee!” Gavroche cried.

Enjolras had already begun tearing up paving stones by the time the other Amis reached the spot.  Feuilly stacked the first stones into the foundation of an outer wall for a barricade that would stretch across the Rue de Rambuteau.  Everyone else quickly joined in, and some people came out of restaurants and cafés around the area to help in the effort.  Gavroche quickly made himself useful stacking sandbags on top of the paving stones to give the fighters something a little better to lean on, and soon, they had a barricade over 6 feet high that looked strong enough to withstand the Germans’ tanks.  On their side, it had steps so they could climb up to the top, and on the other side, it was a solid wall.  Enjolras wiped the sweat out of his eyes and gazed at it appreciatively.

Marius and Cosette showed up after Les Amis had completed the barricade, and Courfeyrac showed them how to get inside.  They both climbed into the barricade and looked around, their faces just as awestruck as if they were tourists looking at the Eiffel Tower.

“Who is in charge of this?” Cosette asked.  Most of Les Amis immediately pointed to Enjolras.

“Here,” Cosette said, handing him the rather large basket she carried.  He lifted the lid, and found several pieces of bread and cheese, as well as a few apples at the bottom.  It was enough to feed everyone there.

“This is fantastic!   _Merci beaucoup_ , Cosette,” he exclaimed.  He put it down next to the barricade, on top of a pile of ammunition and some medical supplies that Combeferre and Courfeyrac had brought.

“I think we’re ready.  Fighters, to your stations.”  

Marius touched Cosette’s arm gently.  “You should find somewhere safe,” he whispered to her. 

“I don’t want to leave y—”

Before she could finish her sentence, a fusillade echoed from the end of the street, and Marius pulled Cosette down behind the barricade instinctively.  They crouched behind the wall of paving stones and Marius held Cosette close for fear of losing her. 

Around them, Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly fired viciously back at the Nazis and showed some of the other citizens who had joined them how to do the same.  After the first two volleys of bullets, these four Amis realized that they had become leaders of the firefight: the citizens of Paris who had joined their barricade looked to them for advice, and expected them to call out when to shoot.  Jehan helped them spread the rifles out all across the street, and together, all of them made it clear that they would not allow the Nazis to advance any farther than they already had.

Still, some Nazis advanced when Les Amis paused to reload their guns.  They could hear boots on the outer barricade, and Enjolras, halfway through reloading, screamed for someone to take up a defensive line for the sake of everyone there.

Bahorel leapt out from where he’d been crouching next to the supply pile, climbed the barricade so that he stood fully on top of it, his whole body exposed, and wielded a rifle as if it was a spear.  He jabbed at the encroaching Nazi lines, and they fell back, some of them clutching at their faces or chests.  Marius recognized the German word for “retreat” among the many things they shouted, and when Les Amis ventured to look, they noticed that Bahorel had attached a knife to the end of his rifle like a bayonet.  He jumped back down behind the barricade, beaming like the sun.

“And that’s how you do it,” he declared proudly. 

Les Amis cheered when they noticed they had successfully fought off the first attack.  Then, they seemed to notice that Cosette was still there.  A couple of them looked surprised, and as Marius helped her stand up, Combeferre walked over to them with a look on his face that said he had something difficult on his mind.

“Cosette, we’re glad you’re here,” he began, “But, uh, I’ve never seen you in this kind of action before.  I’m not sure how to put this… Do you know how to fight?”

“I’ve never fired a gun,” she admitted, somewhat shyly.  “But this is too important for me to stay home.  I would never be able to forgive myself if I sat this one out.  After all, the women have been threatened just as much as the men have during this occupation, and I think it’s only right that the women be allowed to fight for our freedom as well.  It’s our country, too.”

Musichetta smiled at her from across the barricade.  Combeferre smiled, too.  Of course he agreed that women and men were equal.  Still, the fact remained that she was inexperienced in combat.

“We can find something for you to do here that won't put you on the combat lines,” Enjolras assured her.  “This barricade has a place for everyone.”

Cosette and Marius leaned up against the inside of the barricade then, watching as other people went around strengthening the defenses and getting everything ready for another attack.  Cosette handed Jehan some more paving stones as she and Marius tried to figure out where their place was in this barricade.  As they watched everyone, Musichetta slid over and muttered under her breath to Cosette.

“That was quite the speech.  Next thing you know, you’ll be insisting that women should have the vote, too!”

Cosette smiled at the other girl.  “Well, we should,” she whispered.  “British women have it, and American women.  Why not us?”

“Something to fight for after we kick the Nazis out, then, isn’t it?” Musichetta said, and Cosette nodded.  “There’s always something,” Musichetta said.

“The enemy is regrouping!” Courfeyrac shouted from where he stood watch on the barricade.  “Battle stations!”

Bahorel brandished his weapon, still smiling.  “Alright, let’s go again.”

This time, Marius stood up and fired off some shots along with the others.  Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly coordinated their shots so that they didn’t all shoot at the same time, and so they wouldn’t accidentally hit Bahorel, who was fighting out front.  Bahorel shot and slashed at Nazis in the lulls between the fusillades.  Cosette stayed behind the shelter and handed people cartridges when their guns ran out of ammo.  For the second time in a row, their barricade held, and they seemed to be well on their way to developing a good lasting strategy for keeping the Nazis away.

Joly frowned as he watched Bahorel jump down from the barricade a second time.  “Uh, Bahorel,” he asked tentatively, “was your left sleeve always red?”

“This is my favorite vest,” the bold fighter responded.

“I didn’t ask about your vest,” Joly said.  “Get over here, man, I think you’ve been shot in the arm.  You need medical attention.”

Seeing something she could help with, Cosette darted across the barricade to the place where Bahorel and Joly had sat down.  It was a guarded area, where the barricade formed a corner against the wall of a wine shop, and the shop’s awning provided them with at least partial cover overhead.  Cosette grabbed some extra sandbags and stacked them in a smaller wall protruding out from the barricade into their protected area.  Jehan, who had picked a barricade station near that corner, noticed what she was doing and pitched in, and in no time, they had a sturdy wall built of paving stones and sandbags.  It created a sheltered and protected area next to the wine shop where the wounded could find some respite, and it even provided them with a little extra storage space for cartridges and the like.

Joly and Bahorel crouched behind the new wall, and found that they could both sit in the medical corner and be fully guarded by the main barricade to their backs.  As extra protection, Combeferre sat on the barricade a few steps up, leaning against the sand bags at the top of it and watching the street beyond for enemy forces.  Joly served as their chief doctor while Combeferre served as the backup medic and Medical Corner Defense Force.  Cosette became something akin to an orderly, running back and forth across the barricade to help wounded friends to the infirmary, and to get supplies for them.  Jehan became the defense force on the other side of the mini-wall.  Cosette and Jehan also made more bandages when they began to run out.  

In the middle of the afternoon, Grantaire appeared from inside the wine shop.  He wobbled a little in the doorway, steadied himself on the door frame, and then stumbled over a few steps to the infirmary that Cosette, Joly, Jehan, and Combeferre had just set up.  Mumbling something about supplies, he looked at the boxes they had, then wandered back into the wine shop.  A few moments later, he reemerged carrying a box full of wine bottles.

“Empty,” he muttered.

“You’re drunk,” Joly said, matter-of-factly.

“You’re welcome,” Grantaire replied, slurring the words together.  “S’good wine… have fun with those.  I’m gonna go sleep now.”  He tapped the top of the box gently and then stumbled back into the wine shop and disappeared.

Joly mentally counted up the number of bottles in the box, then shook his head and sighed.  “How he’s managing not to die of alcohol poisoning is beyond me,” he whispered to the others.

Along the rest of the barricade, Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly each commanded a team of fighters.  They took turns firing on the Nazis, and rotated their positions so that the barricade would be defended at all times, even when some of its defenders were reloading or taking a break from the battle.  Enjolras ordered his team to fire first, and then Feuilly’s team stood and fired while Enjolras’ team reloaded their guns.  Courfeyrac’s team stood in reserve, waiting to step in when one of the other teams became fatigued.

Musichetta took a spot next to Feuilly as the second-best fighter on his team.  Whenever she saw anyone wearing a Nazi uniform approaching their barricade, she did not hesitate to fire on them.  She screamed hideous insults at them with the same intensity that Enjolras shouted his patriotic war cries.  Each time she fired, she imagined she was firing at the officer who had killed Bossuet.  If she kept that up, she knew she could defend the barricade all night and into the morning if she had to.  Meanwhile, Marius stood next to Enjolras, and fought just as valiantly.  He noticed after a while that the people in their team looked to him just as much as they looked to Enjolras for leadership and advice.  Working together, Les Amis became a very efficient defense force, and when they fought, the barricade held.

Among all this, Gavroche darted in and out like a little sparrow on the barricade’s back.  He skipped through the Rue de Rambuteau when the fighting lapsed, picked up weapons and ammo from the fallen Nazis, and brought them back to distribute among Les Amis.

Their defenses would have worked if the Nazis had not thrown extra forces at them all at once.

Enjolras had done the calculations beforehand, and had figured out how many people he needed to man the barricade, and how strong it needed to be.  He had done these calculations after talking extensively with the other Resistance groups around Paris, and so he had taken their barricades into account as well.  He had assumed that the Nazis would split their forces evenly to attack each of these different defenses, and since he knew how many German forces were in Paris at this point, the math had been relatively easy.  However, he had forgotten about his own reputation among the German lines.  When the Nazi commandant got the word that this terrifying and dangerous "Angel of Death" was commanding the Rue de Rambuteau barricade, he relocated several extra troops to take it down.

Les Amis watched as the tanks rolled down the street.  Feuilly and Musichetta fired on them, but their bullets bounced off.  The tanks advanced halfway down the street, and the one in front leveled its turret at the barricade.

Suddenly, a bottle came flying from the medical corner and landed in the turret of the approaching tank.  A burning rag stuck in the top of the bottle lit the rest of the bottle’s contents on fire, and although it didn’t kill any Nazis or stop the tank from advancing, it did clog the turret’s mobility a little.  When the tank fired, the blast fell a few feet short, hitting the street in front of the barricade and doing no damage to the Resistance lines.

Enjolras looked over at the medical corner and saw Joly passing Combeferre another bottle.  He smiled.  “Putting your chemistry degree to good use, I see.”

Joly glanced up at him.  “These are just simple Molotovs,” he said.  “I could make some with nitric acid in them, probably, if you want.  It’s corrosive to metals.”

“Do it!” Enjolras cried.  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the tank advance further.  A few more feet and it would be within range of the barricade, and even with its damaged turret, it could potentially destroy their defenses.

“It won’t be soon enough to take that one down,” Joly warned, seeing where Enjolras was watching.

“We’re going to need some more Molotovs in the meantime,” Combeferre said from his perch on the barricade.

Just then, Marius rounded the corner of the makeshift infirmary and mounted the barricade next to Combeferre.  “You make them,” he said.  “I can take this post.”

So, Marius sat down on the barricade in the place where Combeferre had been sitting, watching the street outside, and Combeferre crouched on the ground next to Joly as they collectively put their knowledge of science to good use.  Cosette passed the completed Molotovs to Marius, and he threw them with all his might at the encroaching tanks, just trying to do as much damage as he could to turrets and treads, and stop them from advancing.

From the other end of the barricade came an enthusiastic yell.  “For the Resistance!”  As he yelled, Bahorel leapt off of the barricade, using the top of it as a springboard to launch himself onto the first tank.  He grabbed the turret and used it to pull himself up, then once he had a foothold, he ran across the top of the tank to the hatch which led inside it.  He seized the hatch and pulled it up, an unpinned grenade in his other hand. 

One of the Nazis inside shot at Bahorel with a pistol, and Bahorel dodged.  He threw the grenade into the hatch, but the Nazi quickly climbed out and began fighting with him hand-to-hand on top of the tank.  When the grenade went off, they were both thrown violently onto the pavement below.

Bahorel landed hard on his left arm, and heard it snap underneath him.  Joly had bandaged it well, but it still wasn’t strong enough to completely break his fall.

His ears rang like fire alarms as he tried to get to his feet, but he found that he no longer had the strength to hold himself up.  A throbbing pain in his temple told him that he also had a head wound that needed attention.  His assault on the tank had taken too much damage on him.  Instead of getting up, then, he called for help, and Courfeyrac began to climb over the barricade to see if he could carry his bold friend back to safety.

Before Courfeyrac could climb all the way into the street beyond the outer barricade wall, Gavroche launched himself over it in one leap and bounded for the disabled tank.  He had seen the grenade go off, and he knew there should not be anyone still alive in there, and he also knew that if he could reclaim some of their weapons for the barricade, Les Amis would be set for a while.

“Gavroche, no!  It’s dangerous!” Courfeyrac cried as he saw where the little boy was heading.  But Gavroche ignored his warning, and climbed the tank anyway.  Before any of the other Amis could say anything, he had disappeared inside the hatch, humming a jaunty tune the entire time.

Courfeyrac jumped down from the barricade and ran around the side of that tank, and saw another tank behind it readying its turret, preparing to fire.  At that moment, Gavroche popped his head back out of the first tank’s hatch.

“There’s four dead Nazis in there,” he reported.  “And they all have guns!  Look!”  He held up two German guns, one in each hand, as proof.

“Okay, that’s great, now get down from there!” Courfeyrac insisted.

“I have to get the other two…”

“Gavroche, the tank behind this one is going to fire on you, now jump down!  Now!”

Somewhat reluctantly, Gavroche jumped.  Courfeyrac caught him and pulled him down the rest of the way, using his own body as a cover that would shield Gavroche from the bullets.  The second tank fired on the first one, and they heard something pierce the hull.  After the attack, Courfeyrac stood up slowly, and finally let Gavroche stand up, too.

Gavroche looked unharmed, so Courfeyrac breathed a sigh of relief.  If he had still been in the tank, he almost definitely would have died.  It was only then that Courfeyrac felt the stabbing pain in his right shoulder.

“You got hurt,” Gavroche noticed, pointing to it.  When Courfeyrac looked, he saw a piece of shrapnel from the tank embedded in his shoulder.  He stared at it for a minute, then steeled himself and looked back at the little boy who still stood before him.

“I’ll be alright,” he told Gavroche.  “You get back behind the barricade.  I’m going to get Bahorel, and then I’ll be right behind you.”

Gavroche nodded, and headed back toward the barricade.  Then, before he started to climb it, he noticed a dead Nazi lying on the pavement at the other end of the street, near the medical corner.  It was a soldier that either Combeferre or Marius had killed, and his gun lay a few feet away from him on the paving stones.  Gavroche looked at the two guns that he held, tossed them over the barricade, and then darted along its length without climbing over, eager to get to this third German gun and reclaim it for the Resistance.

“GAVROCHE!” Courfeyrac screamed as he tried to pick Bahorel up off the pavement.  Feuilly and Musichetta darted out to help him carry Bahorel, and in that moment, Feuilly noticed a Nazi legion approaching from behind the tanks.  Apparently, they had decided to march on the barricade again by foot, since the first tank had been disabled and was blocking the advancement of the other tanks behind it.

As soon as they were within rifle range, the Nazis began firing.  Gavroche threw the other gun he’d managed to pick up over the barricade, where it landed in the middle of the medical corner.  Then, he began scrambling up the paving stones.  On the other side of the barricade, Marius put down his rifle and reached down to help Gavroche climb over, and Cosette had stopped handing him Molotovs so she could help as well.  One shot hit the barricade next to them, and the second shot hit Marius in the hand.  He cried out in pain, and Cosette screamed, but they didn’t lose their grip on Gavroche.  As one, they both lifted him over the barricade and down into the medical corner before any more shots could be fired.

Marius and Cosette leaned against the barricade on the safe side, exhausted.  They looked at each other with a look that said they would never separate for the world.  Then, they both looked at Gavroche, and when they were satisfied that he seemed fine, Cosette took Marius’ injured hand in hers.  Joly had taken all the bandages they had for Bahorel and Courfeyrac, and Combeferre had used most of the extra cloth for Molotov rags, so she tore a strip from the bottom of her skirt and used that to bandage his hand.  They crouched there behind the barricade together as it began to sink in that some of their friends could die here.

Enjolras watched carefully as Feuilly and Musichetta helped Bahorel and Courfeyrac back to the barricade, while also keeping an eye on the enemy troops.  When his friends got right up against the outer edge, he commanded his defense team of volunteers to fire at the approaching Nazis.  He knew that their bullets would fly over Bahorel, Courfeyrac, Feuilly, and Musichetta’s heads and they were not likely to be hit by friendly fire.  While the volunteer Parisians released their fusillade, Enjolras leaned over the barricade and helped Feuilly climb over it.  Then, he and Feuilly helped Courfeyrac over, and Musichetta helped them lift Bahorel’s mostly limp form before climbing over herself.

Bahorel lay in the courtyard that he had helped to tear the paving stones from, clutching his left side and moaning.  His blood had soaked through most of his clothes by now, and from the way his chest looked, Les Amis could tell that he had probably broken multiple ribs in the fall from the tank.  Part of a bone stuck through his sleeve as well, and there was blood trickling down his face from a rather sizeable cut on his forehead.  Joly cursed when he saw it.

Enjolras helped him carry Bahorel into the wine shop, since there was more room for the wounded to lie down in there, out of the way of the action.  He wanted to stay there while Joly worked, but he knew he needed to go back outside and fend off the encroaching battalions.  Joly nodded at him, giving him unspoken permission to go.  They all understood how serious their situation was becoming.

Outside the wine shop, Courfeyrac sat on a supply box in the medical corner while Combeferre bandaged his shoulder and put his arm in a sling.  The piece of shrapnel lay on the ground nearby.  As Enjolras reemerged from the wine shop, Courfeyrac looked up at him.  His facial expression, usually cheerful, was deadly serious.

“I can’t fight very well with my arm like this,” Courfeyrac said quietly.  “It was my dominant arm, too.”

“It’s okay,” Enjolras promised his friend.  “Just take a breather.  We’ll figure something out.  We’ll get you and Bahorel hospital treatment once we liberate Paris.”

“I won’t be able to defend the barricade,” Courfeyrac said.

“Just rest now,” Combeferre told him.  “You’ve done your part.  Just rest.”

“I can take over command of the reserves,” Jehan whispered.  Like Combeferre, he didn’t much care for battle, but he didn’t see many other options at that moment.

"Are you sure you're up for that, _mon ami?_ " Enjolras asked quietly.  Jehan just nodded.

As they settled in there, Enjolras returned to his post on the barricade.  He looked to his right, and saw Feuilly and Musichetta pouring everything they had into defending it, and about half a dozen Parisians following their lead.  He glanced to his left, and saw Marius doing the same.  He saw Gavroche hurling Molotovs at the Nazis with all the strength that his twelve-year-old arms could muster, and Jehan reciting bold morale-boosting poetry to the handful of men and women left in the reserve lines.  But there was no one else.  All of his other friends were manning the infirmary, or too badly wounded to be in the fight.  He sighed, and picked up his gun again, squinting to see the German lines through the fading light.

“Night is settling in, _mes amis,_ ” he told them softly.  “We hold the barricade until dawn.  In the morning, the Allies will be here and France will be free.” 


	25. The Sun Will Rise

The Allies did not show up the next morning, or the morning after that.  Les Amis held the barricade for a week, each night waiting and hoping that their American and British reinforcements would come the next day.  Enjolras held whispered meetings with the other principal leaders where they thought through tactical reasons why the Allies wouldn’t come.  They tried to avoid coming to the conclusion that the incursion in Normandy had failed.

Each night, each Ami took turns standing watch.  Each day, the broken German tank broke down under a little more under fire from its fellows.  One morning in the middle of June, they noticed that the tank had been moved in the middle of the night, and the road before them was relatively free of clutter once again.

Just as the sun was rising above the barricade on that day, Marius saw its pink-orange rays glinting off of something metallic in the distance.

“More tanks,” he said to Enjolras.

Enjolras urgently shook the others awake.  By the time he got everyone to their feet, the tanks were almost upon them.  At the top of his lungs, he shouted for everyone to fire.  

Combeferre ran through the lines passing out new weapons to everyone: the nitric acid Molotovs that Joly had made.  From their place in the medical corner, Marius and Cosette threw several of these at the tanks, and Courfeyrac tried to throw a few with his left arm, but he hadn’t quite perfected the aim yet.  The ones that hit didn’t do much damage either, and even as the acid dripped down the tanks’ outer armor, Les Amis could tell it would not be enough to really delay them.  There were simply too many, and they advanced too fast.

The tank in front leveled its turret, aiming at the medical corner.  Cosette’s eyes widened, and acting instinctively, she seized Marius by the arm and pulled him out of the corner and in through the door of the wine shop nearby.  Moments later, the cannon fired.

Combeferre had just returned to the medical corner when the turret fired its shot.  He immediately dropped the box of weapons he was holding and shoved Courfeyrac out of the way of the blast.  Courfeyrac stumbled into the barricade’s interior courtyard, while the outer defenses broke under the cannon fire, and pieces of the barricade flew inward, propelled by the Germans’ attack.  One dislocated paving stone hit Combeferre in the back and knocked him forward.  His face would have scraped along the pavement if he had not thrown his hands out to break the fall.

Seeing this, Courfeyrac began lifting paving stones off of him one-handed.  Marius and Cosette darted out from their shelter in the wine shop to help, and Marius hurled some of the paving stones back towards the Nazis while Cosette pulled Combeferre to his feet.  He leaned on her heavily, and there was a fresh gash across the back of his vest, but he was alive.  In the distance, they could hear Enjolras yelling about a breach in the barricade.

Nazis swarmed in through the hole in the medical center, and Combeferre called for Courfeyrac, Marius, and Cosette to get back or they’d be trampled.  Courfeyrac seized Combeferre’s hand with his good hand, and pulled him out of the way as well.

Just then, Bahorel appeared in the doorway of the wine shop, looking like a cross between a mummy and a human what with all the bandages on his body.  He leaned on the door frame for support, and half of the bandages had become red where they used to be white, but he stood up anyway and glared at the Nazis with fierce determination.

“You’re not taking this barricade while I live, Fascist Bastards,” he grunted.

He disappeared back into the wine shop before they could fire.  Ten Nazis descended on the shop then, chasing after him.  Even though they could not see what was happening, Les Amis could still hear Bahorel cursing the Nazis out in both French and Spanish as he took on the entire horde at once.  They heard his voice from the middle of the shop shouting “come and get me!” and some of them thought about how many close scrapes he’d gotten out of before, but they knew he wouldn’t be able to move too fast this time because of his fall from the tank and his many injuries.

Then, the gunfire sounded, and his shouting stopped.

Joly slipped out the door and into the courtyard as the guns went off.  Instinctively, he slammed the door behind him, and Marius and Cosette threw spare paving stones, sandbags, and supply crates in front of it to keep it from opening again.  If they could not save Bahorel, at least they could trap ten Nazis inside somewhere away from their other friends.

On the other side of the shop, Grantaire quietly slipped out a back door and away, muttering under his breath about stupid idealistic resistance fighters with enormous death wishes.  He just didn’t think he could deal with that today.

~

In the courtyard, Enjolras, Feuilly, and Jehan led a string of attacks against the Nazi horde.  Their defenses broken, they fought in an all-out melee in the middle of the street, several dozen Nazis battling against a few Amis.  Marius, Cosette, and Joly hurried over to help, and Combeferre and Courfeyrac did as well, even though they were both badly hurt.  Together, they made one last effort to win the battle at the barricade.

Enjolras fought in the middle of it all, firing at will into the horde of oncoming Nazis, lashing out at those who came up behind him with the butt of his carbine, and generally doing a lot of damage to the German ranks.  He let his passion drive him, and as he thought about his country and his friends, both living and dead, that passion became stronger with every hit he landed.  He ignored every hit they landed on him, and he felt determined not to run away for any reason.  He would see this through to the end, even if it ended with a firing squad.

Next to him, Feuilly battled with the same amount of vigor.  His friends and the people of the world had been through too much at the hands of this army for him to give up now.  He whirled around and shot the Nazis coming up from behind, and then turned again and shot the ones in front of him.  He knew it was either this, or let them take over the world.

Jehan had come to terms with the fact that he might die in the gestapo headquarters, so it was easy for him to come to terms with it again here.  He stood right there next to Enjolras and Feuilly, and the fact that his friends were next to him made him bolder than he usually was.  He looked at the horde that surrounded them, and he decided that he had been blessed with a month or so of extra life so that he could be here with his friends to defend this barricade.  The anguish that he usually expressed through poetry drove him through this battle now, and he fought to defend the friends who had so valiantly defended him.  _If we have to die here,_ he thought, _at least we won’t die alone._

Behind the three of them, Musichetta climbed the remains of the barricade and rained nitric acid down on the Nazi lines.  She hurled the Molotovs with all her might, praising Joly for making them, and Grantaire for emptying the bottles.  Gavroche grabbed a few from her, then scurried down the barricade and in between the legs of the Nazis as they fought, smashing both kinds of Molotovs on the Nazis’ boots.  Marius carefully placed himself in between the Nazis and Cosette, then fought not like his life depended on it, but like hers did.  Everyone threw everything they had into this final battle.

The Parisian volunteers who had rallied around Enjolras fell one by one to the Nazis’ bullets.  Their fearless leader took notice, and fought twice as hard every time he saw someone fall.  But glory cannot last forever, and even the most valiant revolutionary has a limit for how much he can endure.

The German commandant who was leading the onslaught seemed to think that fighting Enjolras was his sworn duty as the leader of this mission.  When he noticed the resistance leader fighting in the middle of the melee, he gestured sharply to several other Nazis and then surrounded Enjolras, intent on taking him down.

 _“Angel of Death,”_ he hissed as they confronted each other in the street.  “You have caused me a great deal of trouble.”

Enjolras did not say anything in return.  Instead, he strengthened his stance and aimed his rifle at the high-ranking Nazi.  He ignored the fact that several others had already hit him, that he was bleeding heavily, and that his side hurt so badly he could barely stand up straight.  He fired.

He tried to dodge all of the commandant’s bullets, but some of them hit their marks.  He swerved around two of the other Nazis surrounding him, then regained his balance and attacked the commandant again with vigor, his teeth clenched as he tried to ignore the pain of being shot.  He let his anger take control of the battle then, and focused on fighting the fascists, so he would not think too much about his own wounds.  In that moment, for Enjolras, there was only Les Amis, the Nazis, a broken barricade, and a desperate need for liberty that persisted above all else.  Nothing else in the world existed besides that.

The other Nazis that the commandant had summoned also joined in the battle, all of them trying to take down the fearsome resistance leader.  They recognized that he had been the one who had done so much damage to their military dictatorship in Paris, and he was one of the biggest threats to their superiority in France.  They had orders from the highest ranks on their chain of command that said this particular resistance fighter needed to be taken out.

Someone grabbed him from behind, and he violently shook them off, but then two more followed.  Enjolras felt his arms twist behind him, and he dropped his gun without wanting to.  He cried out and kicked backwards, and heard grunts of pain from the Nazis behind him, who then loosened their grip on him just a little.  Seeing a chance, he wrenched himself free and lunged for the commandant, ready to fight the Nazi leader with only his fists if he had to.  Then, another Nazi shot him through the leg, and he fell to his knees on the ground.

When the commandant saw that Enjolras was disarmed, beaten, bloody, and on his knees in front of him, he ordered his men to step back.  “I want to execute this one myself,” he said.  Then he stepped forward and aimed his gun straight at Enjolras’ head.

Enjolras was not done fighting.  In one swift motion, he clenched his fist and stood up, knocking the commandant’s gun away.  The commandant backhanded him, then stepped on his chest when he fell to keep him down.  Another Nazi handed his leader a pistol, and he aimed it carefully at Enjolras’ head again.

Enjolras looked the commandant in the eye, ready for the death he felt sure would come.  Then, from across the former barricade’s interior courtyard, Feuilly and Jehan looked up from a fight they’d just won together, and saw Enjolras there on the ground, surrounded by enemies.  Brandishing his rifle high, Feuilly charged into the middle of the German group, breaking through their lines with the element of surprise alone.  He threw himself in between Enjolras and the commandant, let loose a shot, discovered he was out of bullets, and started pummeling the Nazi with the butt of his rifle.  While he fought, Jehan slipped in after him and pulled Enjolras back to his feet.

“You saved me at the last second, now it’s my turn,” he whispered to his friend.

The rest of the troop tried to descend on all of them then, but Marius and Courfeyrac would have none of that.  They charged the group just like Feuilly had done, then stood back to back in the middle of the road, taking down Nazis left and right, Courfeyrac fighting left-handed with only a saber.  They both took several hits, but they kept standing.  A few feet away, Joly and Combeferre made quite the fighting team as well, and they drew some of the Nazis away from the rest of their friends.

“Feuilly!” Musichetta called, still standing on the ruins of the barricade.  Gavroche stood next to her, gathering an armload of Molotovs.  “Watch out!”

Feuilly dropped the commandant on the ground and moved out of the way once he saw her.  Musichetta’s Molotov didn’t quite hit its mark, but it did erupt into flames on the ground, and the flames began to spread to where the commandant lay bleeding.  Feuilly turned and ran away from the fire, over to where Enjolras and Jehan stood instead.  He tried to count the number of bullet wounds in his friend’s body, but couldn’t tell where they all were because of how much blood Enjolras was caked in.

“Not all of it is mine,” Enjolras whispered when he saw where Feuilly was looking.

“But a lot of it is,” Feuilly replied.  “Combeferre!  Get over here!”

Behind them, Courfeyrac called for a retreat.  Most of their forces were already backed against the wall of the café anyway.  Courfeyrac stood against that wall and glanced across the street.  Through the battle, he could see the wine shop where they had trapped some of the Germans earlier.  Its door looked about to come undone, and Courfeyrac guessed that ten more Nazis would join the fight soon.  He knew his friends wouldn’t be able to hold them off.

Jehan and Feuilly carried Enjolras to the café.  Combeferre met them halfway and began keeping Nazis off their backs as they walked.  Musichetta, Joly, Gavroche, and Marius held off the rest of the German horde while Cosette carried some of their supplies into the café.  She darted quickly behind the line of Amis and kept her head down to avoid getting shot.  In her mind, she remembered the safety procedures her adopted father had taught her for how to escape from a bad situation.

Marius ran out of Molotovs after a few minutes, and instead of getting more, Courfeyrac handed him his saber.  Marius brandished it and charged the Nazis, screaming, slashing at everyone who came at him.  As such, he didn’t notice when everyone except himself and Courfeyrac had made it into the café.

“Hey, ASSHOLES!” Courfeyrac shouted suddenly, an idea coming to him.  “What do you think of this?”  With his good hand, he tore one of the swastika banners down from the building next to the café, and with his bad hand, he took out a lighter and let the enemy flag burn.

Once he had their attention, Courfeyrac took off running down the Rue de Rambuteau, holding the burning flag high, letting the flames engulf the entire banner.  The Nazis chased him, angrily, and while they were distracted, Cosette pulled Marius into the café.  From around the corner, they heard the gunfire go off, and they understood what Courfeyrac had done.

Just then, before they could really have that much time to grieve for their fallen friend, the door to the wine shop across the street exploded open and the ten trapped Nazis poured out, eager to join in the fight again.  Some of the others who had chased Courfeyrac were making their way back as well, and Les Amis knew they would storm the café if they could.  Gavroche tried to run back out into the street, but Marius grabbed him around the waist and picked him up just in time, saving him from death at the hands of a Nazi battalion.  Gavroche protested the entire time, shouting something about running for cover when a pup grows up, but Marius carried him up the stairs to the second floor and refused to let him go back into the street.

Musichetta and Cosette both seized tables and chairs from inside the café and used them to barricade the doors.  Joly helped them pack it all together, and the three of them made sure it was strong and secure before heading upstairs to join their friends.  Once they made it to the second-floor room, they all collapsed into chairs or onto the floor, exhausted.

Enjolras looked around the room.  He counted himself, Combeferre, Feuilly, Jehan, Joly, Musichetta, Marius, Cosette, and Gavroche.  Only nine out of the dozens of people who had defended the barricade with them.  Out of all of the Friends of the ABC, were these really the only ones who had survived?

“Is this everyone?” he asked.  His voice sounded more tired than all of them combined.

Joly nodded sadly.  “I think so,” he whispered.

Enjolras did the head count again.  “Where is Courfeyrac?”

Marius bit his lip and looked at the ground.  He heard the echo of the bullets in his mind.  Cosette put her arm around him gently, and leaned her head on his shoulder, looking at him with sad eyes.  Seeing this, Enjolras understood.

“May he, Bahorel, and the other brave volunteers who lost their lives here rest in peace,” Enjolras whispered.  Saying it felt unreal to him.  He couldn’t believe so many of his friends had died.  Then, he seemed to remember something, and he looked up again.

“Grantaire?” he asked.

Les Amis looked around at each other.  None of them had seen Grantaire in so long.  They couldn’t think of where he might have gone.  Then, Joly admitted, “I think he was in the wine shop for a while.  But… the Nazis…”

Les Amis lowered their heads again.  They all remembered the Nazis overrunning that wine shop.

“He died as he lived,” Enjolras said.  Then, in a lower voice, he added, “I suppose that’s fitting.”

To distract himself from the enormous weight of the grief that was starting to settle in the room, Combeferre looked around at all of his friends individually.  He noticed that every one of them had been injured at least somewhat, with the exception of Cosette.  Enjolras, Marius, himself, Jehan, and Feuilly had multiple bullet wounds to deal with, Joly had a gash in his thigh, Musichetta was bleeding in a few places, and Gavroche had a large ugly bruise forming on his cheek from where someone had hit him in the middle of the melee.

Together, Combeferre and Joly set up another makeshift infirmary and began cleaning their friends up, one injury at a time.  Feuilly sat down by the window and decided to watch the street for any activity of any kind.  The others leaned against each other, or against the wall, and just rested.  The Allies might not have come, but these Amis had survived, and they were determined to see the rest of this thing through.

~

They lost track of how long they holed up there in that second-floor room.  Time passed, and they couldn’t find a way to contact the other resistance groups who had built barricades across Paris as well.  In the streets below, people went about their business, and German soldiers mingled with the passers-by just like they had been doing for the past four years.  Nothing looked different.  Les Amis began to think that the barricades must have failed, and slowly, it sank in that their group might be the last one left.

Still, they kept their café fortified.  They kept a lookout on every side.  The building had been transformed over the course of their stay from a normal Parisian café into a command center, and they sent out a coded message to the other resistance groups in Paris that let them know the café was protected.  “We’re here,” they said.  “We are the men and women of Les Amis de la Résistance.  We are still alive, and we are still fighting.”  But no one came to join their little group.

One morning, they woke to the sound of tanks rolling through the streets.  Dreading what he might see, Feuilly went to the window to look out.  He saw the streets of Paris filled with tanks, so many that the pedestrians had to move out of the street entirely.  Nervously, Feuilly called for his friends to come and look as well, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

Combeferre stood up and went to the window.  He had to agree the tanks existed, but something looked off about them to him.  They were built differently than the ones that had attacked the barricade, for starters, as if someone had used a different design to make them.  Secondly, none of them had Nazi Germany’s symbols painted on the side.  Instead, they had stars or diamonds, symbols that Nazi Germany did not use, but some other world powers did.

“These tanks are not German,” he told his friends softly.  Then he turned to look Enjolras in the eye.  “The war might not be lost after all.”

When he heard Combeferre say they weren’t German tanks, Feuilly began waving from the window, trying to get the attention of the soldiers inside.  A few tanks had soldiers riding on top of them as well, and Feuilly caught their eye.

“Who are you?” he asked.  The soldier who had noticed him didn’t seem to understand, so he said it slower and louder, enunciating his words clearly.  The soldier turned to his friend, sitting next to him on the tank, and asked him a question, then looked back at Feuilly and shook his head.

"We can't understand you!" he shouted in English.

“Who do you fight for?” Feuilly asked, still using French.  “Which army is this?  What are you doing here?”

“Okay, I didn’t understand a word of that,” the man replied in English.  “But we’re here to kick some Nazi ass!”  He high-fived his companion.  “So, if y’all ain’t Nazis, you got nothing to worry about from us.”

Marius got up and crossed over to the window, gently tapping Feuilly on the shoulder to let him know he’d take care of it.

“Where are you from?” Marius asked the soldiers, speaking English himself.  “Who do you fight for?”

“America, man!” the soldier cried, pounding his fist in the air excitedly.  Smiling, Marius turned back around to translate this for his friends.

Enjolras was staring at him.  “You can speak English, too?” he asked.  Marius nodded, blushing a little.

“They’re asking if we can come outside,” Marius said, listening to both Enjolras and the Americans at the same time.  “They say they want to show us something.”

Enjolras thought about it for a minute, then decided it would probably be okay, since they were Allies.  Combeferre helped him stand up, since he was still wounded from the battle at the barricade, and together, everyone made their way downstairs.  “When did you learn English?” Enjolras whispered to Marius as they walked.

“About the same time I learned German,” Marius told him.

“Why didn’t you tell us this?”

Marius thought about that for a minute.  “I guess it just didn’t come up?”

They left the building through a back door, since the front door was still barricaded.  In the street outside, they saw dozens of American and British tanks, several of them with soldiers sitting on top.  Some of them held flags, others guns, but most of all, they didn’t actually look like they came for a fight.  The soldiers looked relaxed and happy, laughing with each other and smiling at the people on the sidewalks, or waving at people on balconies several stories above.

Enjolras leaned heavily on Combeferre and limped forward to talk to one of the Allied commanders.  Marius followed close behind him to act as a translator, if the commander turned out to not speak French.

“This is him?” a British soldier said, in French, to the man sitting next to him on the tank.  “You were right.  He does look like Apollo.”

Enjolras looked up, and saw Grantaire sitting there on top of the British tank.  He stared for a moment, not believing his eyes.  “I… I thought you were dead,” he stammered.

“Nope,” Grantaire replied.  “And you’re welcome, by the way, because these guys were about to blow that building to the sky.  I told them not to, of course, as you can probably tell.”

The British soldier nodded, and spoke to Enjolras.  “We heard that this was the last fortified building in downtown Paris,” he explained.  “We saw some broken down German tanks outside it and assumed those were a part of the defenses.  You must understand, I lost a lot of men in Normandy, and I didn’t want to risk any more of their lives unnecessarily in an infantry assault when we have the firepower to take the Germans out from a distance.  But then this man here came forward and told me you were French Resistance…”

Enjolras looked back at Grantaire with a new expression on his face.  “You saved us,” he whispered.  “You… you saved all of us.”

Grantaire shrugged.  “What was I supposed to do, let them kill you?”

“No.  You’ve done well, Grantaire.  Incredibly well.”

Then, another British soldier ran up and spoke to the one sitting on the tank in rapid English, then ran off to the other tanks to tell them the same thing.  The soldier on the tank turned back to Enjolras with a smile.

“I’ve just been told we’re going on a victory parade through the city,” he said.  “Charles de Gaulle and the Free French forces should be here shortly.  Would you like to join us?”

Behind Enjolras, Les Amis started cheering.  Marius picked up Cosette and hugged her, then spun her around excitedly, both of them laughing.  Joly hugged Musichetta, and Gavroche jumped up and down, screaming “victory!  Take that, Nazi bastards!”  Feuilly actually started crying, and ran around hugging all of his friends who were there, congratulating them and thanking them.  He hugged Jehan the tightest.  Combeferre beamed and imagined what it would be like when the Free French arrived in Paris.

Enjolras could hear no other word but “victory.”  It echoed in his head like a cry of joy down the mountainside.  He heard it repeated over and over as Gavroche said it, and then as Feuilly did, and he thought his heart might burst.  He honestly had not expected to live to see this day, when Victory would be shouted across all of Paris, when the Germans in their tanks would be forced to go back to Berlin in defeat.

After a moment, he realized that the British soldier had asked him a question.  He blushed a little as he asked the man to repeat it.

“Would you like to join us in the victory parade?” the soldier said again.  “Your friend here told us glowing stories about your courage and your persistence.  It sounds like you are quite the soldier yourself.  You certainly deserve the honor just as much as my men do.”

Enjolras thought he might cry.  No one except for Les Amis and the other resistance groups had ever actually recognized his action, his contributions to the fight for liberty.  A part of him still couldn’t believe they had actually won.

No words could express his true feelings, so he just nodded.  The British soldier moved over to clear a spot for him on the tank, and with help, he began to climb up.  Then, Grantaire began to climb down, suddenly overcome with his usual feeling of incompetence.  He couldn’t hold a candle to the glory that was Enjolras victorious.

“Where are you going?” Enjolras asked, halfway up the tank.

“I, uh, wanted to get out of your way,” Grantaire muttered.

Enjolras shook his head.  “No, no, _mon ami fidèle,_ you don’t have to move.  You earned that spot.  Sit next to me.”

"Really?"

"Yes, I permit it."

Grantaire stared, searching Enjolras’ face for any sign of insincerity.  It had to be a joke, right?  In a few moments, he would laugh and say he was kidding, he would tell Grantaire to go away.  But Enjolras did not take the words back.  Instead, he finished climbing the tank, sat down, and patted the spot next to him: the spot Grantaire had been sitting in before.  In a daze, Grantaire climbed back up and sat down.  As he sat there, staring at Enjolras next to him, he felt amazed that he was not burned by sitting so close to the sun.  Enjolras smiled at him, and he thought he might fall off the tank.

The British soldier handed the two of them a tri-colored flag of the French Republic, saying he got it from de Gaulle, but it seemed more appropriate for them to wave instead.  Enjolras took the flag in one hand and just smiled at it for a moment, letting the joy of victory wash over him.  Then, he passed the flag to Grantaire.  The two of them raised it high together, letting it fly behind them as the tank began to roll once more through the streets of Paris on its victory tour.  The other Amis got rides on other tanks, both American and British, and as they rolled through the city, the people cheered for them.

The people cheered, and sang La Marseillaise, and waved French flags from every building.  And finally, France was free again.

They had a feeling it would stay that way for a long time to come.


	26. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me through this! I love you all. Here's the last piece.

In November of 1945, Les Amis did something they had not been expecting to do, something that for the longest time had seemed like certain death to them.  They went to Germany.

Enjolras, Combeferre, Feuilly, Jehan, and Grantaire walked through the streets of Nuremberg together, not really knowing how to explain the feelings they felt.  Nuremberg was a pretty little Bavarian town with a lot of old buildings that dated back to the Middle Ages.  It had street cafés like Paris, and public squares, and civilians wandering about, but to Les Amis, it did not feel like a normal town.  They kept expecting to be attacked at every turn.

Instead of attacking, the soldiers they saw waved at them.  The soldiers were American, and they knew that Les Amis had been a crucial part of the victory over the Nazis.  They were all on the same side, and while Les Amis knew that, it felt odd to be on the same side as an army that was currently occupying a place – as the United States was doing to Germany now.

After their walk around the city, the five Amis met up with Joly and Musichetta, who had gone on a lunch date together, and Marius and Cosette, who had been talking to some of the American soldiers by a picturesque stone bridge.  The nine of them walked together to the Palace of Justice, swallowed their apprehensions and reminded themselves that they were not the ones on trial here, and walked into the room.

An American soldier standing next to the door glanced at them as they walked in, but didn’t stop them.  With a gesture, he told them they could sit anywhere they wanted, and then Grantaire nudged Enjolras gently and nodded at his lapel.

“Nice medal,” he whispered.  “That’s probably why they let us in.”

“They let us in because they know we fought on the same side,” Enjolras whispered back.

“Yeah, because you have a medal from General de Gaulle,” Grantaire replied.  “Don’t downplay what you did.  It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“We did it together,” Enjolras reminded him.  “I would have died five years ago if it weren’t for you and everyone else.”

When the Nuremberg Trials got started, Les Amis watched and listened.  Enjolras held Feuilly’s hand for support as various survivors talked about what they had endured in occupied Poland.  Then, while the court took a recess, a lawyer from the same university Enjolras attended in Paris approached their group in the hall.

“I thought I might find you here,” the lawyer said.  “Nice medal.”

 _“Merci,”_ Enjolras muttered politely.

“Listen, they’re going to try some of the ones who were stationed in France next, after the recess,” the lawyer informed Les Amis.  “Do you want to testify?  I’m on the legal team, I could ask you to come to the stand.”

Enjolras thought about it for a moment.  “I could,” he said to the lawyer.  “But there are others here who could tell the story better than I.”

“Tell us who to call, then.”

Enjolras made eye contact with Feuilly, and then Jehan, the unspoken question begging to be asked.  They both nodded, and the lawyer nodded too.  When they went back into the courtroom, Enjolras smiled encouragingly at Feuilly as he went to take the stand.

Feuilly talked about everything he had seen the Nazis do during the past five years.  He talked about running and hiding, and not knowing if he was going to live to see another day.  He talked about what it had been like living under Nazi occupation.  He talked about Éponine, Bossuet, Bahorel, and Courfeyrac.  He talked about the camp at Drancy, and what it had looked like when he stormed it.  He talked about the train station, and the art museum, and the ever-present knowledge that he was still one of the lucky ones, because he’d had friends who made sure he was safe.

When Jehan took the stand, he also shared some of the same stories Feuilly had shared.  He elaborated on what it had felt like to hide in Enjolras’ closet while the Nazis searched the apartment.  He talked about liberating the internment camp in the South, and celebrating Hanukkah in hiding, and sending messages with flowers.  Then he talked about the gestapo headquarters, and many people in the audience cried.

Musichetta also came to the stand, and told her own story.  She explained what it felt like to be a Romani woman under Nazi occupation.  She also talked about losing Bossuet, almost losing Joly, and those few days in the middle of 1943 when she’d had to hide in the basement of her neighbor’s house, for fear that the SS would find her.  She made sure that everyone in the audience understood that just because the war was over, these types of traumas were not going to go away.

With these testimonies fresh in everyone’s memories, several high-ranking members of the French branch of the SS were convicted quickly, and Les Amis could breathe a little easier.  At the end of the day, they walked out of the courtroom together and stood as a group in the streets of Nuremberg, just gazing at each other proudly.

“Well, my friends,” Enjolras said.  “We did it.”  He beamed at them all in turn.

“We did,” Feuilly admitted.  “So, what now?”

“We go back to Paris,” Marius said, his arm around Cosette.  “Cosette and I want to get married in Notre Dame, and we want you all to be there.”

“We insist,” Cosette added, smiling, and all of Les Amis assured her they would love nothing more than to attend her wedding. 

“Should we tell them the rest of our news?” Marius asked his fiancée, nudging her playfully.  “About our, uh… our little boy?”

Les Amis gasped.  Several of them looked at Cosette just to see if Marius was telling the truth, or to see if he was suggesting what they thought.  To their surprise, Cosette laughed.

“I’m not pregnant,” she said.  “We’ve decided we’re going to adopt Gavroche.”

Les Amis applauded the couple then, and every single one of them promised they would be available for babysitting if Marius and Cosette should ever find themselves needing some alone time, a romantic getaway, or whatever else.

Then, Musichetta looped her arm through Joly’s and smiled at their circle of friends.  “We’re getting married, too,” she informed them.  “It’s going to be a beautiful multicultural ceremony with no hatred and no fascists allowed.”  Joly kissed his fiancé on the cheek as she said this, overflowing with pride for how amazing it would feel to be able to call her his wife.

Les Amis all smiled and hugged each other, and as they walked back to the bus station to buy their tickets back to Paris, they promised each other that no matter what else happened in the future, they would be there together.  They were bold and undefeatable.  They were Les Amis de l’ABC, a group that had finally managed to become historic.


End file.
